kern

name

Etymology: The unincorporated community in Missouri is named after Robert Kern. The Kern River is named after Edward Kern.

1. A surname.
2. An unincorporated community in Macon County, Missouri, United States.
3. A river in California, United States.

noun

1. A churn.

verb

Etymology: From French carne (“corner; projecting angle; quill of a pen”), from Latin cardinem (“hinge”) or from Etymology 1. The verb is a back-formation from kerned, which is from the noun. Doublet of cardo.

1. 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.

   “If you need to kern anything beyond the most commonly used pairs, you can use applications software such as Adobe PageMaker to customize pairs.”

   “Especially consider kerning if you are printing on a relatively high-resolution printer, such as a 600-dpi (dots per inch) laser printer.”