Word.ws English Dictionary

terns

/ˈtɜː(ɹ)nz/

terns is the plural of tern.

Meaning of tern

Noun (1)

tern (plural terns)

  1. 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 (2)

tern (plural terns)

  1. (dated, obsolete) A thing with three components; a set of three things.
    1. (dated, obsolete) 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

See all 5 meanings of tern

Phrases with terns

11 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with terns

Questions about terns

What is terns the plural of?
Terns is the plural of tern.
How do you pronounce terns?
Terns is pronounced /ˈtɜː(ɹ)nz/.

Words near terns in the dictionary

  1. Ternivka
  2. Ternopil
  3. Ternopilian
  4. Ternopol
  5. ternovite
  6. terns
  7. ternstroemiaceous
  8. Ternus
  9. Terny
  10. Terocodame
  11. Terocodames

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: terns (page history and authors); tern (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-I learned some phrases-terns.wav.

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