kern

Meanings

Noun

  • A corn; grain; kernel.
  • The last handful or sheaf reaped at the harvest.
  • The harvest home.
  • A doll or figurine raised in celebration of a successful harvest; kern-baby.
  • Any part of a letter which extends into the space used by another letter.
  • A light-armed foot soldier of the ancient militia of Ireland and Scotland; in archaic contexts often used as a term of contempt.
  • A boor; a low person.
  • An idler; a vagabond.
  • Alternative of quern
  • A churn.

Verb

  • To adjust the horizontal space between selected pairs of letters (characters or glyphs); to perform such adjustments to a portion of text, according to preset rules.

Origin

  • From Middle English curn, cooren, variant forms of Middle English corn, see English corn and also Dutch kern, Old High German kerno, cherno, Middle High German kerne, kern, German Kern ("core, kernel"),
    Old Norse kjarni, Icelandic kjarni, Danish kjerne, Swedish kärna ("core, kernel"); see also kernel.
  • From French carne, from Latin cardinem ("hinge") or from Etymology 1. The verb is a back-formation from kerned, which is from the noun. cardo.
  • From Middle English kerne, from Middle Irish ceithern.

Modern English dictionary

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