yarn
UK/jɑːn//jɑɹn/
yarn noun: a twisted strand of fibre used for knitting or weaving.
Noun
yarn (countable and uncountable, plural yarns)
- A twisted strand of fibre used for knitting or weaving.
- Bundles of fibres twisted together, and which in turn are twisted in bundles to form strands, which in their turn are twisted or plaited to form rope.
- A story, a tale, especially one that is incredible.
- spin a yarn
- I told him about everything I could think of; and what I couldn't think of he did. He asked about six questions during my yarn, but every question had a point to it. At the end he bowed and thanked me once more. As a thanker he was main-truck high; I never see anybody so polite.1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter IV, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC
Verb
yarn (third-person singular simple present yarns, present participle yarning, simple past and past participle yarned)
- To tell a story or stories, especially one that is lengthy or unlikely to be true.
- "He yarns good," said Tom Platt. "T'other night he told us abaout a kid of his own size steerin' a cunnin' little rig an' four ponies up an' down Toledo, Ohio, I think 'twas, an' givin' suppers to a crowd o' sim'lar kids. Cur'us kind o' fairy-tale, but blame interestin'. He knows scores of 'em."1897, Rudyard Kipling, Captains Courageous
- “Well, well!” exclaimed Mr. van Hoorn. “Here are the boys! As hungry as hunters, I’ll be bound! And we two old fogies have been wasting the whole afternoon yarning away indoors. My goodness, is it as late as that? I say, I want my tea!”1935, Christopher Isherwood, Mr Norris Changes Trains (U.S. title: The Last of Mr Norris), Chapter Thirteen, in The Berlin Stories, New York: New Directions, 1963, p. 152
yarn meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu
yarn in Hindi
- fiber strand for knitting or weaving
- सूत sūt, धागा dhāgā, तागा tāgā
yarn in Tamil
- சரடு, நூலிழை, நூல், முறுக்கிழை, இழை
yarn in Marathi
- सूत
yarn in Urdu
- fiber strand for knitting or weaving
- سوت sūt
More languagesFewer languages
- yarn in Bengali
- সুতা, তন্তু, গল্প, নাবিকের গল্প
- yarn in Telugu
- నూలు
- yarn in Malayalam
- തന്ത്രി tantri
- yarn in Kannada
- ನೂಲು
- yarn in Gujarati
- યાર્ન
- yarn in Arabic
- خَيْط ḵayṭ
- yarn in Persian
- کاموا kâmvâ, نخ nax, خیط xayt
- yarn in Thai
- เส้นด้าย sên-dâai, ด้าย dâai
- yarn in Vietnamese
- sợi
- yarn in Myanmar
- ချည် hkyany
Examples of yarn in a sentence
- "I'm hanged if I know how you've got the immortal rind to come at me with a yarn like this."1930, Norman Lindsay, Redheap, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, →OCLC, page 218:
- Statistically, this person is also likely to be male and well off, but more essentially this person wants to be educated, to be obsessed, wants more than just a good yarn.2018 September 15, Julius Taranto, “On Outgrowing David Foster Wallace”, in Los Angeles Review of Books:
- They had stayed in some little pension and had gone for little, bored walks while the colonel went out in the boats with the fisherman, or sat yarning with them in the café.1942, Neville Shute, chapter 7, in Pied Piper, New York: William Morrow & Co:
Synonyms of yarn
Forms of yarn
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | yarns |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | yarns |
| present participle | yarning |
| past participle | yarned |
| past | yarned |
Origin of yarn
From Middle English yern, yarn, from the Old English ġearn (“yarn, spun wool”), from Proto-West Germanic *garn, from Proto-Germanic *garną (“yarn”), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰorn-, *ǵʰerH- (“tharm, guts, intestines”). Cognates Akin to West Frisian jern, Dutch garen (“yarn”), German Garn (“yarn”), Danish garn, Swedish garn (“yarn, thread”), Icelandic garn (“yarn”), Latin hernia (“rupture”), Ancient Greek χορδή (khordḗ, “string”), Sanskrit हिर (hira, “band”). Compare also the obsolete doublet garn.
Words formed from yarn
Phrases with yarn
Words that rhyme with yarn
Questions about yarn
- What does yarn mean?
- Yarn means a twisted strand of fibre used for knitting or weaving.
- What is yarn in Hindi?
- Yarn in Hindi is सूत (sūt), धागा (dhāgā), तागा (tāgā). See Yarn meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use yarn in a sentence?
- "I'm hanged if I know how you've got the immortal rind to come at me with a yarn like this."
- What part of speech is yarn?
- Yarn can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce yarn?
- Yarn is pronounced /jɑːn/ (UK).
- What is the plural of yarn?
- The plural of yarn is yarns.
Words near yarn in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: yarn (page history and authors); yarn (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); yarn (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); yarn (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); yarn (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); തന്ത്രി (Malayalam) (page history and authors); yarn (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); yarn (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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: en-au-yarn.ogg, en-us-yarn.ogg.
Cite this entry: “yarn.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/yarn. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.