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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