Word.ws English Dictionary

-ern

-ern suffix: added to the names of directions to form adjectives.

Suffix

-ern

  1. (nonstandard outside fossilized words) Added to the names of directions to form adjectives.

Origin of -ern

In form, from Middle English -erne, -ern, -ren, -ron (northern(e), northron, so(u)thern(e), sothron, etc), from Old English -erne (norþerne, etc), from Proto-Germanic *-r- (probably from rebracketing of *nurþrōnijaz etc) + *-ōnijaz, whence also Old High German -rōni, Old Saxon -rōni, Old Norse -rǿnn / Old Norse -ǿnn. In practice, possibly a back-formation from northern, southern, etc. (Contrast the -ern in hāliġern, etc., which is related to ærn (“place”).)

Words formed from -ern

Questions about -ern

What does -ern mean?
-ern means added to the names of directions to form adjectives.
What part of speech is -ern?
-ern is a suffix.

Words near -ern in the dictionary

  1. -erization
  2. -erize
  3. -erized
  4. -erizes
  5. -erizing
  6. -ern
  7. -eroo
  8. -eroonie
  9. -ers
  10. -ery
  11. -es

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: -ern (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “-ern.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/-ern. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.