tern

• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: tûrn, IPA^(key): /tɜːn/

• Audio (Southern England):

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• (General American) enPR: tûrn, IPA^(key): /tɝn/

• Audio (General American):

  (file)

• Homophones: turn, tarn
• Rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)n

Via an East Anglian dialect, from some Scandinavian (North Germanic) language, related to Danish terne, Norwegian terne, and Swedish tärna, all from Old Norse þerna (“tern; maidservant”),^[1] ultimately from Proto-West Germanic *þewernā (“handmaid, young girl”). First attested in the 1670s.

tern (plural terns)

1. Any of various seabirds of the subfamily Sterninae (of the family Laridae) that are similar to gulls but are smaller and have a forked tail.

• terne (obsolete, 17th c.)

• ternery

• sea swallow (“common tern”) (one sense)

The noun is derived from Late Middle English terne (“throw of a die or dice showing the number three”),^[2] from Old French terne (“gathering of three people; trinity”) (modern French terne), from Latin ternās,^[3] the accusative feminine plural of ternī (“three each; three at a time”), from ter (“thrice”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *tréyes (“three”)) + -ī (from -us (suffix forming adjectives)).

The adjective is either derived from the noun, or directly from Latin ternī (“three each; three at a time”);^[3] see above.

tern (plural terns)

1. (dated or obsolete) A thing with three components; a set of three things.
   1. (gambling, dated) A lottery prize resulting from the favourable combination of three numbers in the draw.
      • 1856, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Seventh Book”, in Aurora Leigh, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1857, →OCLC, page 319:

        And yet, now even, if Madonna willed, / She'd win a tern in Thursday's lottery, / And better all things.

tern (not comparable)

1. (chiefly botany, rare) Consisting of three components; ternate, threefold, triple.

   Synonyms: ternary, treble, trine; see also Thesaurus:triple

   Coordinate terms: quatern, (obsolete, rare) quine

   tern flowers    tern leaves

   a tern schooner, one with three masts

• tern on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• tern (disambiguation) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Category:Sternidae on Wikimedia Commons.Wikimedia Commons
• Sternidae on Wikispecies.Wikispecies

• Rent, rent, tren

Learned borrowing from Latin ternus.

• IPA^(key): (Central, Balearic) [ˈtɛrn]
• IPA^(key): (Valencia) [ˈtɛɾn]

tern m (plural terns)

1. set of three, trio
2. matching three-piece suit

• “tern”, in Diccionari de la llengua catalana [Dictionary of the Catalan Language] (in Catalan), second edition, Institute of Catalan Studies [Catalan: Institut d'Estudis Catalans], April 2007

tern

1. alternative form of teren

Borrowed from French terne.

tern m or n (feminine singular ternă, masculine plural terni, feminine and neuter plural terne)

1. (literary) matte, lackluster, dull (lacking gloss)
2. (figurative) colorless, pale (lacking color or contrast)

   Synonyms: monoton, mohorât