different between bawn vs mawn

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /b??n/
• Rhymes: -??n

Etymology 1

From Irish bábhún (“walled enclosure”).

Noun

bawn (plural bawns)

1. A cattle-fort; a building used to shelter cattle.

   • But these round hills and square bawnes, which you see so strongly trenched and throwne up

   • 1729, Jonathan Swift, The Grand Question Debated, Thomas Sheridan (editor), John Nichols (editor, revised edition), 1812, The British Classics, Volume 45: The works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, D.D.: Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin, Volume XI, page 163:

     The Grand Question Debated

     Whether Hamilton's Bawn Should be Turned into a Barrack or a Malt-house ? 1729

     This Hamilton's bawn, while it sticks in my hand, / I lose by the house what I get by the land; / But how to dispose of it to the best bidder, / For a barrack or malthouse, we now must consider.

   • 1892, Joseph Jacobs (editor), Jack and His Master, Celtic Fairy Tales:

     When he was coming into the bawn at dinner-time, what work did he find Jack at but pulling armfuls of the thatch off the roof, and peeping into the holes he was making?

2. A defensive wall built around a tower house. It was once used to protect livestock during an attack.
   • 2004, Colm J. Donnelly, Passage or Barrier? Communication between Bawn and Tower House in Late Medieval Ireland – the Evidence from County Limerick, in Château Gaillard 21: Études de castellologie médiévale: La Basse-cour: Actes du colloque international de Maynooth (Irlande), 23-30 août 2002, page 57:

     The cattle, therefore, would be brought into the bawn at night, as is stated by the early 17th-century writer Fynes Moryson who wrote that the Irish cattle “eat only by day, and then are brought at evening within the bawns of castles, where they stand or lie all night in a dirty yard without so much as a lock of hay.”

Etymology 2

Participle

bawn

1. Pronunciation spelling of born.
   • 1899, Charles W. Chesnutt, Sis’ Becky’s Pickaninny:

     But ef it has ter be prove' ter folks w'at wa'n't bawn en raise' in dis naberhood, dey is a' easy way ter prove it.

Anagrams

• WNBA

Welsh

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /bau?n/

Verb

bawn

1. first-person singular imperfect subjunctive of bod

Synonyms

• byddwn

Mutation

English

Pronunciation

• enPR: môn, IPA^(key): /m??n/
• Rhymes: -??n

Noun

mawn (plural mawns)

1. (Scotland, dialect) A maund; a basket or hamper.
2. A ghost.

Welsh

Etymology 1

From Proto-Celtic *m?ni- (compare Irish móin).

Noun

mawn m pl (singulative mawnen)

1. peat

Derived terms

• mawnbwll (“peat-pit”)
• mawndir (“peaty land”)
• mawnog (“peat-bog”)

Mutation

Etymology 2

Verb

mawn

1. Nasal mutation of bawn.

Mutation

Yola

Noun

mawn

1. Alternative form of mawen

References

• J. Poole W. Barnes, A Glossary, with Some Pieces of Verse, of the Old Dialect of the English Colony in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy (1867)