Word.ws English Dictionary

carn

/kɑːn/

carn is the archaic form of cairn.

Interjection

  1. (Australia, informal) Come on.
    • Slipper hooted. But in a moment another wedging peak was upon us.
      "Carn, kid. No guts, no glory."
      "I don't think so," I said.
      "It's the only way home now."2008, Tim Winton, Breath, Picador UK Paperback edition 2008, Ch.3, p.52
  2. (Australia, informal) An exclamation of support or approval, usually for a sporting (football) team.
    • Cries of "Carn the Bunnies" rang out, and the talk was of past glories, present disappointments and future hopes.2001 March 26, “Rabbitohs win hearts and minds of the disaffected”, in The Sydney Morning Herald
    • Surely there is someone in ABC Television management who has read Bruce Dawe's evocative poem Life Cycle: "When children are born in Victoria/they are wrapped in the club-colours, laid in beribboned cots/having already begun a lifetime's barracking/Carn, they cry, carn … feebly at first."2004 February 12, “Keeping sport local on our ABC”, in The Age

Meaning of cairn

Noun

cairn (plural cairns)

  1. A rounded or conical heap of stones erected by early inhabitants of the British Isles, apparently as a sepulchral monument.
    • "Now here let us place the gray stone of her cairn: / Why speak ye no word!"—said Glenara the stern.1826, Thomas Campbell, “Glenara”, in The Poetical Works of Thomas Campbell, page 105
    Synonyms:
    See burial mound § Synonyms
  2. A pile of stones heaped up as a landmark, to guide travelers on land or at sea, or to arrest attention, as in surveying, or in leaving traces of an exploring party, etc.
    • After fifteen minutes of this we were glad to reach a high saddle on which former travellers had piled little cairns of commemoration and thankfulness.1926, T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, New York: Anchor, published 1991, page 180
  3. A cairn terrier.

Proper noun capitalized: Carn

Carn (plural Carns)

  1. A surname.

Forms of carn

Noun
pluralcarns
Proper noun
pluralCarns

Origin of carn

Adapted from the vernacular pronunciation of c'mon, itself an informal variant of come on. The first uses of the term in its extended sense appear to have been amongst Australian rules football fans in Victoria, with the use later spreading to other states and sports.

* As an Irish surname, reduced from McCarn. * As a Cornish surname, variant of Carne. * As a Dutch, German and Jewish surname, variant of Kern.

Phrases with carn

Words that rhyme with carn

34 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about carn

What does carn mean?
Carn means come on.
What is carn the archaic form of?
Carn is the archaic form of cairn.
What part of speech is carn?
Carn can be an interjection or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce carn?
Carn is pronounced /kɑːn/.

Words near carn in the dictionary

  1. carmustine
  2. Carmyle
  3. Carmyllie
  4. carménère
  5. carménères
  6. carn
  7. Carn Brea
  8. Carn Brea Village
  9. Carnaby
  10. Carnac
  11. carnage

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: carn (page history and authors); Carn (page history and authors); cairn (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: EN-AU ck1 carn.ogg.

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