urn

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See also: URN, urṇ, and urn.

English[edit]

Alternative forms[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From Middle English urne, from Old French urne, from Latin urna (vessel).

Pronunciation[edit]

Noun[edit]

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.
  4. (figurative) Any place of burial; the grave.
  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.

Derived terms[edit]

Translations[edit]

Verb[edit]

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[edit]

Anagrams[edit]

Dutch[edit]

Alternative forms[edit]

Etymology[edit]

Latin urna.

Pronunciation[edit]

Noun[edit]

urn f (plural urnen, diminutive urntje n)

  1. funerary urn
    Synonym: asvaas
  2. any other footed vase

Derived terms[edit]