tern
/tɜːn//tɝn/
tern noun: any of various seabirds of the subfamily Sterninae (of the family Laridae) that are similar to gulls but are smaller and have a forked tail.
Noun (1)
tern (plural terns)
Noun (2)
tern (plural terns)
- A thing with three components; a set of three things.
- A lottery prize resulting from the favourable combination of three numbers in the draw.
- And yet, now even, if Madonna willed, / She'd win a tern in Thursday's lottery, / And better all things.1856, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Seventh Book”, in Aurora Leigh, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1857, →OCLC, page 319
- A lottery prize resulting from the favourable combination of three numbers in the draw.
Adjective
tern (not comparable)
- Consisting of three components; ternate, threefold, triple.
- tern flowers tern leaves
- a tern schooner, one with three masts
Proper noun capitalized: Tern
Tern
- A river in Shropshire, England, which joins the Severn at Atcham; in full, the River Tern.
tern meaning in Malayalam and Arabic
tern in Malayalam
- tern, migratory seabirds of the subfamily Sterninae
- ആള āḷa
tern in Arabic
- bird of the subfamily Sternidae
- خَرْشَنَة ḵaršana
Examples of tern in a sentence
- All three acts were religious donations aimed at supporting the old family foundation, Klášterní Hradisko.
- He passed gulls, terns, cormorants as if they were standing still.
- Most numerous and widespread of the terns of Aotearoa are the tara, or white-fronted terns.
Synonyms of tern
Forms of tern
| plural | terns |
|---|---|
| alternative form | terne |
Origin of tern
Via an East Anglian dialect, from some Scandinavian (North Germanic) language, related to Danish terne, Norwegian terne, and Swedish tärna, all from Old Norse þerna (“tern; maidservant”), ultimately from Proto-West Germanic *þewernā (“handmaid, young girl”). First attested in the 1670s.
PIE word *tréyes The noun is derived from Late Middle English terne (“throw of a die or dice showing the number three”), from Old French terne (“gathering of three people; trinity”) (modern French terne), from Latin ternās, the accusative feminine plural of ternī (“three each; three at a time”), from ter (“thrice”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *tréyes (“three”)) + -ī (from -us (suffix forming adjectives)). The adjective is either derived from the noun, or directly from Latin ternī (“three each; three at a time”); see above.
Words formed from tern
Phrases with tern
Words that rhyme with tern
Questions about tern
- What does tern mean?
- Tern means any of various seabirds of the subfamily Sterninae (of the family Laridae) that are similar to gulls but are smaller and have a forked tail.
- What is tern in Malayalam?
- Tern in Malayalam is ആള (āḷa). See Tern meaning in Malayalam.
- What part of speech is tern?
- Tern can be a noun, an adjective or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce tern?
- Tern is pronounced /tɜːn/ (UK).
- What is the plural of tern?
- The plural of tern is terns.
Words near tern in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: tern (page history and authors); Tern (page history and authors); ആള (Malayalam) (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-terne.wav, En-us-turn.ogg.
Cite this entry: “tern.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tern. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.