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urn. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
urn, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
urn in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word
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English
Alternative forms
Etymology
From Middle English urne, from Old French urne, from Latin urna (“vessel”).
Pronunciation
Noun
urn (plural urns)
- A vase with a footed base.
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!
- A metal vessel for serving tea or coffee.
- A vessel for the ashes or cremains of a deceased person.
- (figurative) Any place of burial; the grave.
1599, William Shakespeare, “The Life of Henry the Fift”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii]:Or lay these bones in an unworthy urn, / Tombless, with no remembrance over them.
- (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.
- (botany) A hollow body shaped like an urn, in which the spores of mosses are contained; a spore case; a theca.
Derived terms
Translations
a vessel for ashes or cremains of a deceased person
Verb
urn (third-person singular simple present urns, present participle urning, simple past and past participle urned)
- (transitive) To place in an urn.
Further reading
Anagrams
Dutch
Alternative forms
Etymology
Latin urna.
Pronunciation
Noun
urn f (plural urnen, diminutive urntje n)
- funerary urn
- Synonym: asvaas
- any other footed vase
Derived terms