erne
UK /ɜːn/ · US /ɝːn/ noun, verb, proper noun
- noun A sea eagle (Haliaeetus), especially the white-tailed eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla)
- noun (chiefly poetic, dialectal, sciences) An eagle.
- verb (obsolete) To long; to yearn.
- proper noun A river in Ireland and Northern Ireland, starting in County Cavan, entering County Fermanagh, and passing through Upper and Lower Lough Erne on its way to the sea in County Donegal.
- proper noun A surname from German.
Synonyms
sea eagle white-tailed eagle ern grey sea eagle gray sea eagle European sea eagle white-tailed sea eagle Haliatus albicilla
Etymology
From Middle English ern, erne, earn, from Old English earn (“eagle”), from Proto-West Germanic *arnu (“eagle”), from Proto-Germanic *arnuz (“eagle”), from Proto-Germanic *arô (“eagle”) (whence also Arnold), from Proto-Indo-European *h₃érō (“large bird, eagle”).
Cognate with North Frisian Aarn, iarn, jarn (“eagle”), West Frisian earn (“eagle”), Dutch arend (“eagle”), German Aar (“eagle”), Low German Arend (“eagle”), Danish, Faroese, Norwegian Bokmål, and Norwegian Nynorsk ørn (“eagle”), Icelandic and Swedish örn (“eagle”), Ancient Greek ὄρνεον (órneon), ὄρνις (órnis, “bird”) (whence ornitho-), translingual -ornis, Proto-Slavic *orьlъ (“eagle”).
From Irish abhainn na hÉirne, An Éirne, from a goddess or population called Érainn, which could be related to Old Irish Ériu (“matron goddess of Ireland”), in which case a doublet of Ireland.
* As an Alemannic German surname, from a short form of Arnold.
* As an English surname, from archaic erne (“eagle”).
Webster’s 1913
Etymology [AS. earn eagle; akin to D. arend, OHG. aro, G. aar, Icel., Sw., & Dan. örn, Goth. ara, and to Gr. Ornithology.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “erne”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details