Word.ws English Dictionary

erne

UK/ɜːn//ɝːn/

erne noun: a sea eagle (Haliaeetus), especially the white-tailed eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla).

erne: a sea eagle (Haliaeetus), especially the white-tailed eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla)
Image: Christoph Müller, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

erne (plural ernes)

  1. A sea eagle (Haliaeetus), especially the white-tailed eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla)
    • Ahoi! come kite! Ahoi! come erne from off the fen!1866, Charles Kingsley, chapter 20, in Hereward the Wake, London: Nelson, page 274
    • [T]his is an in-depth study of the Erne (to use the old Anglo-Saxon name for this eagle).1985, Amadon, Dean, “Review of The Return of the Sea Eagle”, in The Auk, volume 102, number 1, pages 218-19
  2. (dialectal, poetic) An eagle.
    • the bald erne

Verb

erne

  1. (obsolete) To long; to yearn.

Proper noun (1) capitalized: Erne

Erne

  1. A river in Ireland and Northern Ireland, starting in County Cavan, entering County Fermanagh, and passing through Upper and Lower Lough Erne on its way to the sea in County Donegal.

Proper noun (2) capitalized: Erne

Erne (plural Ernes)

  1. A surname from German.

erne meaning in Tamil

erne in Tamil

கட்டற்கழுகு, கடற்கழுகு, கடற் கழுகு

Synonyms of erne

Forms of erne

Noun
pluralernes
alternative formearn
alternative formern
Proper noun
pluralErnes

Origin of erne

From Middle English ern, erne, earn, from Old English earn (“eagle”), from Proto-West Germanic *arnu (“eagle”), from Proto-Germanic *arnuz (“eagle”), from Proto-Germanic *arô (“eagle”) (whence also Arnold), from Proto-Indo-European *h₃érō (“large bird, eagle”). Cognate with North Frisian Aarn, iarn, jarn (“eagle”), West Frisian earn (“eagle”), Dutch arend (“eagle”), German Aar (“eagle”), Low German Arend (“eagle”), Danish, Faroese, Norwegian Bokmål, and Norwegian Nynorsk ørn (“eagle”), Icelandic and Swedish örn (“eagle”), Ancient Greek ὄρνεον (órneon), ὄρνις (órnis, “bird”) (whence ornitho-), translingual -ornis, Proto-Slavic *orьlъ (“eagle”).

From Irish abhainn na hÉirne, An Éirne, from a goddess or population called Érainn, which could be related to Old Irish Ériu (“matron goddess of Ireland”), in which case a doublet of Ireland.

* As an Alemannic German surname, from a short form of Arnold. * As an English surname, from archaic erne (“eagle”).

Words formed from erne

Words that rhyme with erne

28 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about erne

What does erne mean?
Erne means a sea eagle (Haliaeetus), especially the white-tailed eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla).
What is erne in Tamil?
Erne in Tamil is கட்டற்கழுகு, கடற்கழுகு, கடற் கழுகு. See Erne meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is erne?
Erne can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce erne?
Erne is pronounced /ɜːn/ (UK).
What is the plural of erne?
The plural of erne is ernes.

Words near erne in the dictionary

  1. ernai
  2. Ernakulam
  3. Ernandez
  4. Ernandezes
  5. ernas
  6. erne
  7. erned
  8. Ernei
  9. ernes
  10. ernest
  11. Ernesta

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: erne (page history and authors); Erne (page history and authors); erne (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-erne.ogg.

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