Word.ws English Dictionary

hain

hain verb: to hedge or fence in; enclose; protect by hedging.

Verb

hain (third-person singular simple present hains, present participle haining, simple past and past participle hained)

  1. (Northern England, Scotland, dialectal, transitive) To hedge or fence in; enclose; protect by hedging.
  2. (Northern England, Scotland, dialectal, transitive) To save; spare; refrain from using or spending.
  3. (Northern England, Scotland, dialectal, intransitive) To be thrifty; be economical.

Noun

hain (plural hains)

  1. (Northern England, Scotland, dialectal, obsolete) An enclosure; a park

Forms of hain

Verb
third-person singular presenthains
present participlehaining
past participlehained
pasthained
alternative formhane
Noun
pluralhains

Origin of hain

From earlier hayne, from Middle English *haynen, *heynen, from Old Norse hegna (“to protect; defend”), from Proto-Germanic *haginjaną (“to hedge”), equivalent to hedge + -en. Cognate with Icelandic hegna (“to fence; confine; punish”), Swedish hägna (“to fence off; enclose; protect”), Danish hegne (“to enclose; fence in”). Related to hedge. The noun is from Middle English heyn.

Questions about hain

What does hain mean?
Hain means to hedge or fence in; enclose; protect by hedging.
What part of speech is hain?
Hain can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of hain?
The past tense of hain is hained.

Words near hain in the dictionary

  1. haimish
  2. Haimowitz
  3. Haimowitzes
  4. haimura
  5. haimuras
  6. hain
  7. hain't
  8. Hainai
  9. Hainam
  10. Hainamese
  11. Hainan

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hain (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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