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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

quern.

A mill for grinding corn, especially a handmill made of two circular stones.

5 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/kwɝn/General-American/kwɜːn/Received-Pronunciation
  1. A mill for grinding corn, especially a handmill made of two circular stones.

Where this word comes from

From Middle English quern, cwerne, from Old English cweorn (“quern, hand-mill, mill”), from Proto-Germanic *kwernō (“millstone”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʷréh₂wō (“heavy stone”), from *gʷréh₂us (“heavy”). Cognate with Swedish kvarn, Tocharian B kärweñe, Lithuanian girna, Russian жёрнов (žórnov, “millstone”).

verb/kwɝn/General-American/kwɜːn/Received-Pronunciation
  1. To grind; to use a quern.

    transitive
Where this word comes from

From Middle English quern, cwerne, from Old English cweorn (“quern, hand-mill, mill”), from Proto-Germanic *kwernō (“millstone”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʷréh₂wō (“heavy stone”), from *gʷréh₂us (“heavy”). Cognate with Swedish kvarn, Tocharian B kärweñe, Lithuanian girna, Russian жёрнов (žórnov, “millstone”).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.