burn
noun
- injury from heat
- sensation of pain, often from heat or chemical
- place where there was a fire before; result of being burned
- process of combustion
verb
- (cause to) be on fire
Wiktionary
Pronunciation: /bɜːn/ / /bɔːn/ / /bɝn/
name
Etymology: * The surname is of English origin, variant of Bourne. * The placename in Yorkshire is likely related to the suffix -burn, found in placenames such as Woodburn, Glusburn, etc., from burn (“stream”).
- A village and civil parish in Selby district, North Yorkshire, England (OS grid ref SE5928).
- A river in Dartmoor, Devon, England, a tributary of the River Tavy.
- A short river in Norfolk, England, which flows into the North Sea.
- A river in North Yorkshire, England, a tributary of the River Ure.
- A surname.
noun
Etymology: From Northern Middle English burn, from Old English burne, burna (“spring, fountain”), Proto-West Germanic *brunnō, from Proto-Germanic *brunnô, *brunō. Cognate with Scots burn (“stream”), Cimbrian, Mòcheno prunn (“well, spring”), Dutch bron (“well”), German Bronnen, Brun, Brunnen (“well”), Luxembourgish Buer, Bur (“well”), Yiddish ברונעם (brunem, “well”), Danish brønd (“well”), Faroese brunnur, bruður (“well”), Icelandic brunnur (“well”), Norwegian Bokmål, Scanian brønn (“well”), Norwegian Nynorsk brunn, brønn (“well”), Swedish brunn (“well”), Gothic 𐌱𐍂𐌿𐌽𐌽𐌰 (brunna, “source, wellspring”), Crimean Gothic brunna (“spring, fountain, source”). Also Albanian burim (“spring, fountain”), Ancient Greek φρέαρ (phréar, “well, reservoir”), Old Armenian աղբիւր (ałbiwr, “fount”). Doublet of bourn. More at brew.
- A large stream.
“This darksome burn, horseback brown, / His rollrock highroad roaring down, / In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam / Flutes and low to the lake falls home.”
“He may pitch on some tuft of lilacs over a burn, and smoke innumerable pipes to the tune of the water on the stones.”
verb
Etymology: Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *bʰrewh₁-der. Proto-Indo-European *bʰrenw- Proto-Indo-European *bʰrénuh₁e-? Proto-Germanic *brinnaną Proto-West Germanic *brinnan Old English biernan ▲ Proto-Germanic *brinnaną Proto-Indo-European *-yeti Proto-Indo-European *-éyeti Proto-Germanic *-janą Proto-Germanic *brannijaną Proto-West Germanic *brannijan Old English bærnan Old Norse brennabor. Middle English brennen English burn From Late Middle English burne, birne, which arose via the metathesis of brinne, brynne, a variant of brennen. The East Midland forms were heavily influenced by Old Norse brinna, brenna (“to burn”), from Proto-Germanic *brinnaną (“to burn”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰrenw-, present stem from *bʰrewh₁-. Doublet of brew. The late metathesis of East Midland brin- to birn- (and subsequently burn-) parallels the phonological development of bird and dirt from brid and drit. As this metathesized form became the Chancery Standard, it completely displaced the semantic functions and weak conjugation paradigm of the native Old English bærnan (weak), alongside the surviving remnants of byrnan (strong). Cognate with Cimbrian prönnan (“to burn”), Dutch barnen, branden (“to burn”), German brinnen (“to burn”), Luxembourgish brennen (“to burn”), Vilamovian brīn (“to burn”), Yiddish ברענען (brenen, “to burn”), Danish brænde (“to burn”), Faroese, Icelandic brenna (“to burn”), Norwegian Bokmål brenne (“to burn”), Norwegian Nynorsk brenna, brenne (“to burn”), Swedish brinna (“to burn”), Gothic 𐌱𐍂𐌹𐌽𐌽𐌰𐌽 (brinnan, “to burn”). See also Middle Irish brennim (“drink up”), bruinnim (“bubble up”); also Middle Irish bréo (“flame”), Albanian burth (“Cyclamen hederifolium, mouth burning”), Sanskrit भुरति (bhurati, “moves quickly, twitches, fidgets”). More at brew.
- To cause to be consumed by fire.
“He burned his manuscript in the fireplace.”
“They haue ſlayne my baylye⸝ and diſtroyed the houſes of my men⸝ banyſſhed and chaſed away myne offycers, and brent yͤ houſe in the worlde that I loued beſt.”
- To be consumed by fire, or in flames.
“He watched the house burn.”
“Plastics are energy-rich substances, which is why many of them burn so readily. Any organism that could unlock and use that energy would do well in the Anthropocene. Terrestrial bacteria and fungi which can manage this trick are already familiar to experts in the field.”
- To overheat so as to make unusable.
“He burned the toast. The blacksmith burned the steel.”
- To become overheated to the point of being unusable.
“The grill was too hot and the steak burned.”
- To make or produce by the application of fire or burning heat.
“to burn a hole; to burn letters into a block”
“I posted myself near a place where they had been burning charcoal, and very soon the hare came running past, close to where I was standing.”
- To give off light; to be lit up.
“I knew that if a light was burning I should be able to see the window lit up from the yard at the back, although the gas itself would be out of sight.”
- To injure (a person or animal) with heat or chemicals that produce similar damage.
“She burned the child with an iron, and was jailed for ten years.”
- To cauterize.
- To sunburn.
“She forgot to put on sunscreen and burned.”
- To consume, damage, or change the condition of, as if by action of fire or heat; to affect as fire or heat does.
“to burn the mouth with pepper”
“This tyrant fever burns me up.”
- To be hot, e.g. due to embarrassment.
“The child’s forehead was burning with fever. Her cheeks burned with shame.”
“In ſlumbers oft for fere I quake / For hete & cold I burne & ſhake / For lake of ſlepe my hede dothe ake / What menys thys”
- To cause to combine with oxygen or other active agent, with evolution of heat; to consume; to oxidize.
“to burn iron in oxygen”
“A human being burns a certain amount of carbon at each respiration.”
- To combine energetically, with evolution of heat.
“Copper burns in chlorine.”
- To write data to a permanent storage medium like a compact disc or a ROM chip.
“We’ll burn this program onto an EEPROM one hour before the demo begins.”
“At first they didn’t do anything by design, beyond writing songs and gigging around Sheffield, distributing homemade demo CDs at shows. Their canny friends burned copies to leave on buses, but more importantly, uploaded them to filesharing sites and set up a MySpace page.”
- To render subtitles into a video's content while transcoding it, making the subtitles part of the image (hardsubs).
“My old DVD player could play DivX files but didn't recognize the subtitle file, so I had to burn them in.”
- To betray.
“The informant burned him.”
- To insult or defeat.
“I just burned you again.”
- To waste (time); to waste money or other resources.
“We have an hour to burn.”
“The company has burned more than a million dollars a month this year.”
- In certain games, to approach near to a concealed object which is sought.
“You’re cold… warm… hot… you’re burning!”
“Not being accustomed to make fine distinctions, or to appreciate magnanimity, they read his letters and speeches as if they read them not. They were not aware when they approached a heroic statement,—they did not know when they burned.”
- To accidentally touch a moving stone.
- In pontoon, to swap a pair of cards for another pair, or to deal a dead card.
- To make an area of an image darker (when processing photographs in a darkroom, this is accomplished by increasing the exposure of that area to light).
- To be converted to another element in a nuclear fusion reaction, especially in a star.
- To discard.
- To shoot someone with a firearm.
- To compromise (an agent's cover story).
“He had already burned his cover with Mrs. Phillips, and it was not a mistake he intended to make again.”
“Eventually they'd report back to Ryker, and he still didn't know if Ryker had personally burned his cover and sent assassins after him, or if the SSU had a mole. Until he knew for certain, he had to play this safe.”
- To blackmail.
“"How does Leipzig burn him precisely?" Enderby insisted. "What's the pressure? Dirty pix—well, okay. Karla's a puritan, so's Kirov. But I mean, Christ, this isn't the fifties, is it? […]”
- To desire or ache for (something); to focus on attaining (something).