quern
/kwɜːn/US/kwɝn/
quern noun: a mill for grinding corn, especially a handmill made of two circular stones.
Noun
quern (plural querns)
- A mill for grinding corn, especially a handmill made of two circular stones.
- She is shaking in ingredients from various small bottles and querns produced from the pockets of her robes, and from the drawer in the wooden table.1978, Robert Nye, Merlin
- MacKie has noted that querns that were in use in Scotland up to the present day were about 450mm—600mm in diameter and that the lower stone was completely perforated to make it adjustable (MacKie 1987, 5).2005, Anne Crone, Ewan Campbell, A Crannog of the First Millennium, AD: Excavations by Jack Scott at Loch Gloshan, Argyll, 1960, page 100
Verb
quern (third-person singular simple present querns, present participle querning, simple past and past participle querned)
- To grind; to use a quern.
- He could almost set aside the longing for Eyjan that ever querned within him—almost—in this place so utterly sundered from everything of hers.1979, Poul Anderson, The Merman's Children, published 2011, unnumbered page
- For women he thought these should include combing, spinning, querning, leather and fur-working and be associated with finds of beads, bracelets and perforated teeth.2000, Tina Tuohy, “9: Long Handled Weaving Combs: Problems Determining the Gender of Tool-Maker and Tool-User”, in Moira Donald, Linda Hurcombe, editors, Gender and Material Culture in Archaeological...
quern meaning in Tamil, Urdu and Pashto
quern in Tamil
- திரிகை, ஏந்திரம்
quern in Urdu
- ہتھ چکی
quern in Pashto
- quern
- مېچن mečën
Examples of quern in a sentence
- Not surprisingly, different cultures discovered the suitability of various rock types for manufacturing querns and millstones.2009, Charles D. Hockensmith, The Millstone Industry, page 212:
- Beyond this now lay only chaos and a querning sea.2009, Greer Gilman, Unleaving: Cloud & Ashes: Three Winter's Tales, page 262:
Forms of quern
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | querns |
| alternative form | curn |
| alternative form | kern |
| alternative form | quirn |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | querns |
| present participle | querning |
| past participle | querned |
| past | querned |
Origin of quern
From Middle English quern, cwerne, from Old English cweorn (“quern, hand-mill, mill”), from Proto-Germanic *kwernō (“millstone”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʷréh₂wō (“heavy stone”), from *gʷréh₂us (“heavy”). Cognate with Swedish kvarn, Tocharian B kärweñe, Lithuanian girna, Russian жёрнов (žórnov, “millstone”).
Words formed from quern
Words that rhyme with quern
Questions about quern
- What does quern mean?
- Quern means a mill for grinding corn, especially a handmill made of two circular stones.
- What is quern in Tamil?
- Quern in Tamil is திரிகை, ஏந்திரம். See Quern meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use quern in a sentence?
- Not surprisingly, different cultures discovered the suitability of various rock types for manufacturing querns and millstones.
- What part of speech is quern?
- Quern can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce quern?
- Quern is pronounced /kwɝn/ (US).
- What is the plural of quern?
- The plural of quern is querns.
Words near quern in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: quern (page history and authors); quern (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); quern (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); مېچن (Pashto) (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-quern.wav.
Cite this entry: “quern.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/quern. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.