tarn
/tɑːn//tɑɹn/
tarn noun: a small mountain lake, especially in Northern England.
Noun
tarn (plural tarns)
- A small mountain lake, especially in Northern England.
- Thou Wind, that ravest without, / Bare craig, or mountain-tairn, or blasted tree, / Or pine-grove whither woodman never clomb, / Or lonely house, long held the witches' home, / Methinks were fitter instruments for thee, / Mad Lutanist! [footnote: Tairn is a small lake, generally if not always...1802 October 4, S[amuel] T[aylor] Coleridge, “Dejection: An Ode”, in The Morning Post; republished in Henry Nelson Coleridge, editor, The Poetical Works of S. T. Coleridge, volume I (Juvenile Poems...
- It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene [of the House of Usher], of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the...1839 September, Edgar A[llan] Poe, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, in William E[vans] Burton and Edgar A. Poe, editors, Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine, and American Monthly Review, volume V, number...
- One of many small mountain lakes or ponds.
- It [the caribou] makes a fine, bold study on the foreground of an evening scene among the mountain tarns of Northern Idaho, as it fulfils the ideal description of the stag given by [Walter] Scott and other writers.1874 August 20, Mortimer Kerry, “Zoology of the Northwest: The Cervidæ”, in Charles Hallock, editor, Forest and Stream: A Weekly Journal of Field and Aquatic Sports, Practical Natural History, Fish...
- Have you ever been swimming in glacial water – water turned milky blue or deep maroon by minerals and deposits seized by the glacier as it ponderously made its way across a continent? You would have been high atop a mountain, maybe in the Canadian Rockies or in Montana, where glaciers, now in...2002, Jennifer Sinor, “Time, Days, and Page”, in The Extraordinary Work of Ordinary Writing: Annie Ray’s Diary, Iowa City, Iowa: University of Iowa Press, →ISBN, page 86
Proper noun capitalized: Tarn
Tarn
- A department of Occitania, France. Capital and largest city: Albi (INSEE code 81).
- A right tributary of the Garonne in southwestern France, flowing through the departments of Lozère, Aveyron, Tarn, Haute-Garonne and Tarn-et-Garonne.
tarn meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Arabic
tarn in Hindi
- small mountain lake
- टार्न ṭārn
tarn in Tamil
- மலைச்சுனை
tarn in Urdu
- پہاڑی جھیل
tarn in Arabic
- small mountain lake
- بحيرة جبلية
Examples of tarn in a sentence
- Tarns are found in some of the vales, and are numerous upon the mountains.1853, [William] Wordsworth, [Adam] Sedgwick, “Description of the Scenery of the Lakes”, in John Hudson, editor, A Complete Guide to the...
- There Grendel was watching his blood flow out into the seething tarn.1961, Norma Lorre Goodrich, “Beowulf”, in The Medieval Myths, New York: The New American Library, page 31:
- In another story the remarkable mystery of the umbrella lost at the shores of a tarn and retrieved at the seaside is explained by the underground communication between the two.1976, Linda Dégh, Andrew Vázsonyi, “Legend and Belief”, in Dan Ben-Amos, editor, Folklore Genres (Publications of the American Folklore...
- Here is alpine country at its best, complete with lakes and tarns set amid truly rugged promontories.2013, Gordon Sullivan, Cathie Sullivan, Photographing Montana: Where to Find Perfect Shots and How to Take Them, Woodstock, Vt.: The...
Forms of tarn
| plural | tarns |
|---|---|
| alternative form | tairn |
Origin of tarn
From Middle English terne, tarne (“lake; pond, pool”), from Old Norse tjǫrn (“a small lake without tributaries”), from Proto-Germanic *ternō (“water hole”), perhaps related to *turnaz (“bitter, embittered”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *der- (“to separate, split; to crack, shatter”). The word is cognate with Danish tjern, Faroese tjørn (“pond”), Icelandic tjörn (“pond”), Norwegian Bokmål tjern (“small forest or mountain lake”) (Norwegian Nynorsk tjern, tjørn), Swedish tjärn (“small forest lake”).
Words formed from tarn
Phrases with tarn
Words that rhyme with tarn
Questions about tarn
- What does tarn mean?
- Tarn means a small mountain lake, especially in Northern England.
- What is tarn in Hindi?
- Tarn in Hindi is टार्न (ṭārn). See Tarn meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use tarn in a sentence?
- Tarns are found in some of the vales, and are numerous upon the mountains.
- What part of speech is tarn?
- Tarn can be a noun or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce tarn?
- Tarn is pronounced /tɑːn/ (UK).
- What is the plural of tarn?
- The plural of tarn is tarns.
Words near tarn in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: tarn (page history and authors); Tarn (page history and authors); tarn (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); tarn (Urdu 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.
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Cite this entry: “tarn.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tarn. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.