urn

Alternative forms

• urne (obsolete)

Etymology

From Middle English urne, from Old French urne, from Latin urna (“vessel”). Doublet of urna.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ɜːn/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• (US) IPA^(key): /ɝn/
• Rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)n
• Homophone: earn

Noun

urn (plural urns)

1. A vase with a footed base.
   • 1648, John Wilkins, Mathematical Magick:

     A rustic, digging in the ground by Padua, […] found an urn, or earthen pot, in which there was another urn.

   • 1700, [John] Dryden, “Canace to Macareus”, in Fables Ancient and Modern; […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC:

     His scattered limbs with my dead body burn, / And once more join us in the pious urn.

   • 1967, Barbara Sleigh, Jessamy, Sevenoaks, Kent: Bloomsbury, published 1993, →ISBN, page 47:

     Mary Fibbs and all her friends start making coughing noises whenever I come near them, and then they all giggle and Mary says Grandfather mixes his cough medicine in the urns on top of the gate posts after dark with his umbrella, and now Jessamy!

2. A metal vessel for serving tea or coffee.
3. A vessel for the ashes or cremains of a deceased person.
   • 1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, Canto IX:

     So draw him home to those that mourn
     ⁠In vain; a favourable speed
     ⁠Ruffle thy mirror’d mast, and lead
     Thro’ prosperous floods his holy urn.

4. (figurative) Any place of burial; the grave.
   • 1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life of Henry the Fift”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii]:

     Or lay these bones in an unworthy urn, / Tombless, with no remembrance over them.

5. (historical, Roman antiquity) A measure of capacity for liquids, containing about three gallons and a half, wine measure. It was half the amphora, and four times the congius.
6. (botany) A hollow body shaped like an urn, in which the spores of mosses are contained; a spore case; a theca.

Verb

urn (third-person singular simple present urns, present participle urning, simple past and past participle urned)

1. (transitive) To place in an urn.

Further reading

• urn on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• Nur, nur, run

Alternative forms

• urne

Etymology

From Latin urna.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ʏrn/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Hyphenation: urn
• Rhymes: -ʏrn

Noun

urn f (plural urnen, diminutive urntje n)

1. funerary urn

   Synonym: asvaas

2. any other footed vase

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈurn/
• Rhymes: -urn
• Syllabification: urn

Noun

urn f

1. genitive plural of urna

Anagrams

• run