ken

Meanings

Verb

• To give birth, conceive, beget, be born; to develop (as a fetus); to nourish, sustain (as life).
• To know, perceive or understand.
• To discover by sight; to catch sight of; to descry.

Noun

• Knowledge, perception, or sight.
• Range of sight.
• A house, especially a den of thieves.
• Youth or children's group.
• A Japanese unit of length equal to six shakus

Origin

• From Middle English kennen ("to give birth, conceive, generate, beget; to develop (as a fetus), hatch out (of eggs); to sustain, nourish, nurture"), from Old English cennan ("to give birth, conceive, generate, beget"), from Proto-Germanic *kanjaną.
• Northern and Scottish dialects from Middle English kennen, from Old English cennan ("make known, declare, acknowledge") originally “to make known”, causative of cunnan, from Proto-Germanic *kannijaną, causative of *kunnaną, from which comes the verb can. Cognate with West Frisian kenne ("to know; recognise"), Dutch kennen ("to know"), German kennen ("to know, be acquainted with someone/something"), Norwegian Bokmål kjenne, Norwegian Nynorsk kjenna, Old Norse kenna ("to know, perceive"), Swedish känna ("to know, feel"). See also: can, con.
• The noun meaning “range of sight” is a nautical abbreviation of present participle kenning.
• Perhaps from kennel.
• Hebrew קֵן ("nest")
• Japanese 間