born

• (horse–hoarse merger)
  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /bɔːn/
  • (General American) IPA^(key): /boɹn/, [bo̞ɹn]

  • Audio (US):

    (file)

  • Rhymes: -ɔː(ɹ)n
  • Homophones: borne, bourn, bourne, Bourne (horse–hoarse merger); bawn (non-rhotic); barn (card–cord merger)
• (without the horse–hoarse merger)
  • (rhotic) IPA^(key): /bɔːɹn/
  • (non-rhotic) IPA^(key): /bɔːn/

From Middle English born, boren, borne, iborne, from Old English boren, ġeboren, from Proto-West Germanic *boran, *gaboran, from Proto-Germanic *buranaz, past participle of Proto-Germanic *beraną (“to bear, carry”), equivalent to bear +‎ -en. Cognate with Saterland Frisian gebooren (“born”), West Frisian berne (“born”), Dutch geboren (“born”), German geboren (“born”), Swedish boren (“born”).

born

1. past participle of bear; given birth to.

   Although not born in the country, she qualifies for nationality through her grandparents.

2. (obsolete) past participle of bear in other senses.
   • 1784, Thomas Sheridan, Life of Dr. Swift, Section I:

     In some monasteries the severity of the clausure is hard to be born.

   • 1815 December (indicated as 1816), [Jane Austen], chapter XVI, in Emma: […], volume I, London: […] [Charles Roworth and James Moyes] for John Murray, →OCLC, page 286:

     If I had not persuaded Harriet into liking the man, I could have born any thing.

• Jamaican Creole: baan

born (not comparable)

1. Having from birth (or as if from birth) a certain quality or character; innate; inherited.

   In the United States, information describing the operation of nuclear weapons is born secret.

   • 1701 January (indicated as 1700), [Daniel Defoe], “Part II”, in The True-Born Englishman. A Satyr, [London: s.n.], →OCLC, page 61:

     I'll make it out, deny it he that can, / His Worship is a True-born Engliſhman, / In all the Latitude that Empty Word / By Modern Acceptation's understood.

   • 1942, Storm Jameson, Then we shall hear singing: a fantasy in C major:

     I ought really to have called him my sergeant. He's a born sergeant. That's as much as to say he's a born scoundrel.

   • 1965, Frank Herbert, Dune‎^[1] (Science Fiction), New York: Ace Books, →OCLC, page 118‎^[2]:

     “Your desert boots are fitted slip-fashion at the ankles. Who told you to do that?”
     "It . . . seemed the right way."
     "That it most certainly is."
     And Kynes rubbed his cheek, thinking of the legend: "He shall know your ways as though born to them."

• borne
• né, née

Dialectal variant of burn.

born (plural borns)

1. (Geordie) Alternative spelling of burn (a stream)

born (third-person singular simple present borns, present participle bornin, simple past and past participle bornt)

1. (Geordie) Alternative spelling of burn (with fire etc.)

• Frank Graham, editor (1987), “BORN”, in The New Geordie Dictionary, Rothbury, Northumberland: Butler Publishing, →ISBN.
• Scott Dobson, Dick Irwin “born”, in Newcastle 1970s: Durham & Tyneside Dialect Group‎^[3], archived from the original on 2024-09-05.

• Brno, Norb

• Audio:

  (file)

born f (plural bornen)

1. (dialectal) Obsolete form of bron.

• barn

born n

1. indefinite plural of barn

born

1. first/third-person singular preterite of beirnan