Word.ws English Dictionary

byrnie

UK/ˈbɜːni/US/ˈbɝni/

byrnie noun: a short chain mail shirt, covering from the upper arms to the upper thighs.

Noun

byrnie (plural byrnies)

  1. (historical) A short chain mail shirt, covering from the upper arms to the upper thighs.
    • […] those that walked armed before the Witches’ booths, six in company, harnessed as for battle in byrnies of shining bronze, with greaves and shields of bronze and helms that glanced in the sun.1922, E[ric] R[ücker] Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros: A Romance, London: Jonathan Cape […], →OCLC, page 17
    • It was the Viking habit. Even as a man plowed his field or chopped trees in the woods, his byrnie and his sword were always at hand.1961, Norma Lorre Goodrich, “Beowulf”, in The Medieval Myths, New York: The New American Library, page 33

byrnie meaning in Tamil

byrnie in Tamil

காப்பு மேலங்கி

Examples of byrnie in a sentence

  • Unferth stood beside him, his huge arms folded on his byrnie.1972, John Gardner, Grendel, André Deutsch, page 97:
  • The mail-coat, or byrnie, was made of iron links that probably were cut out of sheet metal with a die, or from flat hammered wire cut into short lengths.1992, Calvin B Kendall, Voyage to the Other World, University of Minnesota, page 19:

Forms of byrnie

pluralbyrnies
alternative formbyrny

Origin of byrnie

From Middle English brinie, burne (whence also, without metathesis, obsolete English brinie), from Old Norse brynja. Cognates include Old English byrne, Gothic 𐌱𐍂𐌿𐌽𐌾𐍉 (brunjō) (whence Old Church Slavonic брънѩ (brŭnję)), German Brünne, French broigne.

Questions about byrnie

What does byrnie mean?
Byrnie means a short chain mail shirt, covering from the upper arms to the upper thighs.
What is byrnie in Tamil?
Byrnie in Tamil is காப்பு மேலங்கி. See Byrnie meaning in Tamil.
How do you use byrnie in a sentence?
Unferth stood beside him, his huge arms folded on his byrnie.
What part of speech is byrnie?
Byrnie is a noun.
How do you pronounce byrnie?
Byrnie is pronounced /ˈbɜːni/ (UK).
What is the plural of byrnie?
The plural of byrnie is byrnies.

Words near byrnie in the dictionary

  1. Byrn
  2. Byrne
  3. Byrnes
  4. Byrneside
  5. Byrness
  6. byrnie
  7. byrnies
  8. Byrns
  9. byrny
  10. byroad
  11. byroads

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: byrnie (page history and authors); byrnie (Tamil Wiktionary) (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: “byrnie.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/byrnie. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.