Word.ws English Dictionary

urne

urne is the obsolete spelling of urn.

Meaning of urn

Noun

urn (plural urns)

  1. A vase with a footed base.
    • A rustic, digging in the ground by Padua, […]found an urn, or earthen pot, in which there was another urn.1648, John Wilkins, Mathematicall Magick. Or, The Wonders that may be Performed by Mechanicall Geometry. […], London: […] M[iles] F[lesher] for Sa[muel] Gellibrand […], →OCLC
  2. A metal vessel for serving tea or coffee.
  3. A vessel for the ashes or cremains of a deceased person.
    • So draw him home to those that mourn
      ⁠In vain; a favourable speed
      ⁠Ruffle thy mirror’d mast, and lead
      Thro’ prosperous floods his holy urn.1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], “Canto IX”, in In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC
  4. (figuratively) Any place of burial; the grave.
    • Or lay these bones in an unworthy urn, / Tombless, with no remembrance over them.1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life of Henry the Fift”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount...
  5. (Roman, historical) A measure of capacity for liquids, containing about three gallons and a half, wine measure. It was half the amphora, and four times the congius.
  6. A hollow body shaped like an urn, in which the spores of mosses are contained; a spore case; a theca.

See all 7 meanings of urn

Forms of urne

pluralurnes

Questions about urne

What is urne the obsolete spelling of?
Urne is the obsolete spelling of urn.

Words near urne in the dictionary

  1. urnae
  2. urnal
  3. urnaloricid
  4. urnaloricids
  5. urnas
  6. urne
  7. urned
  8. Urner
  9. Urners
  10. urnes
  11. Urness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: urne (page history and authors); urn (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: “urne.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/urne. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.