Word.ws English Dictionary

sharn

sharn noun: the dung or manure of cattle or sheep.

Noun

sharn (uncountable)

  1. (Scotland) The dung or manure of cattle or sheep.
    • right between the byre and the stable and the barn on one side and the house on the other was the cattle-court and right in the middle of that the midden, high and yellow with dung and straw and sharn, and Mistress Strachan could never forgive Peesie's Knapp because of that awful smell it had.1932, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Sunset Song (A Scots Quair), Polygon, published 2006, page 19

Forms of sharn

alternative formshairn
alternative formshearn
alternative formshern

Origin of sharn

From Middle English schern, from Old English sċearn (“sharn, dung, muck, filth”), from Proto-West Germanic *skarn, from Proto-Germanic *skarną (“manure”), from Proto-Indo-European *sker- (“dung, manure”). Cognate with North Frisian skern (“dung, manure”), Danish, Swedish, and Icelandic skarn (“dung”), German Harn (“urine”). Doublet of skarn.

Words formed from sharn

Words that rhyme with sharn

Questions about sharn

What does sharn mean?
Sharn means the dung or manure of cattle or sheep.
What part of speech is sharn?
Sharn is a noun.

Words near sharn in the dictionary

  1. Sharma
  2. Sharman
  3. Sharmans
  4. Sharmas
  5. Sharmishtha
  6. sharn
  7. Sharnal Street
  8. Sharnbrook
  9. sharny
  10. Sharoian
  11. Sharoians

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sharn (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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