terne

/tɜːn/US/tɝn/

terne adjective: colourless, drab, dull. Also the obsolete spelling of tern.

Adjective

terne (comparative more terne, superlative most terne)

Colourless, drab, dull.

Noun

terne (countable and uncountable, plural ternes)

(also, attributive) An alloy coating made of lead and tin (or, more recently, zinc and tin), often with some antimony, used to cover iron or steel.
Synonym of terneplate (“thin iron or steel sheeting coated with this alloy”).

Synonyms:

terneplate

Also used as

terne is also the obsolete spelling of tern.

Synonyms of terne

terneplate

Forms of terne

Adjective
comparative	more terne
superlative	most terne
Noun
plural	ternes

Origin of terne

Borrowed from French terne, from Middle French, from Old French terne (“dim, dull”), from Frankish *darnī (“concealed, hidden; secret”); further etymology unknown, perhaps related to Proto-West Germanic *derk (“dark; dirty”), perhaps ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *dʰerg- (“to darken, dim”). Doublet of dern.

From terneplate, probably from terne (“colourless, drab, dull”) (see etymology 1) + plate (“layer of a material on the surface of something, plating”).

A variant of tern.

Words that rhyme with terne

28 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about terne

What does terne mean?: Terne means colourless, drab, dull.
What part of speech is terne?: Terne can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce terne?: Terne is pronounced /tɜːn/ (UK).

Words near terne in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: terne (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: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-terne.wav.

Cite this entry: “terne.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/terne. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.