Word.ws English Dictionary

dern

/ˈdɜː(ɹ)n/

dern noun: a secret; secrecy.

Noun (1)

dern (plural derns)

  1. (obsolete) A secret; secrecy.
  2. (obsolete) A secret place; hiding.
  3. (obsolete) An obscure language.
  4. (obsolete) Darkness; obscurity.

Adjective

dern (comparative more dern, superlative most dern)

  1. (dialectal, obsolete) Hidden; secret; private.
    • Now with their backs to the den's mouth they sit, / Yet shoulder not all light from the dern pit.1659, Dr. H. More, Immortal, of the Soul
    • Through dreary beds of tangled fern, / Through groves of nightshade dark and dern.1819, J. R. Drake, The Culprit Fay

Verb

dern (third-person singular simple present derns, present participle derning, simple past and past participle derned)

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To hide; secrete, as in a hole.
    • He at length escaped them by derning himself in a fox-earth.1865, Hugh Miller, My schools and schoolmasters
  2. (intransitive, obsolete) To hide oneself; skulk.
    • But look how soon they heard of Holoferne / Their courage quail'd, and they began to derne.1584, Thomas Hudson, Judith

Noun (2)

dern (plural derns)

  1. (UK) A gatepost or doorpost.
    • So I just put my eye between the wall and the dern of the gate, and I saw him come up to the back door […]1855, Charles Kingsley, Westward Ho!, Ch. XIV, How Salvation Yeo Slew the King of the Gubbings

Proper noun capitalized: Dern

Dern (plural Derns)

  1. A surname from German.

Forms of dern

Noun
pluralderns
Adjective
comparativemore dern
superlativemost dern
Verb
third-person singular presentderns
present participlederning
past participlederned
pastderned
Proper noun
pluralDerns

Origin of dern

From Middle English dern, derne, from Old English dyrne, dierne (“secret”), from Proto-West Germanic *darnī (“hidden, secret”).

From Middle English dern, derne, from Old English dyrne, dierne (“hidden, secret, retired, obscure, remote, eluding detection, concealed, deceitful, evil, magical”), from Proto-West Germanic *darnī (“hidden, secret”). Doublet of terne.

From Middle English dernen, dærnen, from Old English dyrnan, diernan (“to keep secret, conceal, hide, restrain, repress, hide oneself”), from Proto-West Germanic *darnijan (“to conceal”), from *darnī (“hidden, secret”). Cognate with Old Saxon dernian (“to conceal”), German tarnen (“to camouflage, disguise”). See also darn, tarnish.

Words formed from dern

Words that rhyme with dern

28 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about dern

What does dern mean?
Dern means a secret; secrecy.
What part of speech is dern?
Dern can be a noun, an adjective, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce dern?
Dern is pronounced /ˈdɜː(ɹ)n/.
What is the plural of dern?
The plural of dern is derns.

Words near dern in the dictionary

  1. dermotrophic
  2. dermotropic
  3. dermotropism
  4. dermovascular
  5. derms
  6. dern
  7. Derna
  8. Dernah
  9. derne
  10. derned
  11. Derner

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dern (page history and authors); Dern (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-dern.wav.

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