tarn

Definition from Wiktionary, a free dictionary

Contents 1 English 1.1 Etymology 1.2 Pronunciation 1.3 Noun 1.3.1 Translations 1.3.2 References

[edit] English

[edit] Etymology

From Old Norse tjǫrn (“‘a small mountain lake without tributaries’”). Cognate with Norwegian tjern (“‘small forest or mountain lake’”)

[edit] Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA: /tɑː(ɹ)n/, SAMPA: /tA:(r)n/

  Rhymes: -ɑː(r)n

[edit] Noun

tarn (plural tarns)

1. (Northern England) A small mountain lake, especially in Northern England.
   • 1839, Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher, Project Gutenberg (1997), 1,

     It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down—but with a shudder even more thrilling than before—upon the remodelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.

[edit] Translations

[edit] References

• “tarn” in the Online Etymology Dictionary, Douglas Harper, 2001