different between pern vs wern

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /p??(?)n/

Etymology 1

Presumably from a verb pern, a variant of preen, from Middle English prene; pernyng is read by some editors in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (v. 611) and interpreted as the present participle of this verb, also reflected dialectally as pirn (“reel; bobbin”). See also pirl.

Noun

pern (plural perns)

1. part of a spinning wheel, a conical spool onto which the thread is wound from the spindle
   • 1813 February 4, "Specification of the Patent granted to William Broughton […] for a Method of making a peculiar Species of Canvas", in The Repertory of Arts, Manufactures, and Agriculture, page 72:

     […] these yarns are to be wove in the usual way of weaving canvas, but the weft to come off the pern or quill double […]

   • 1851, Official catalogue of the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, Commissioners for the Exhibition of 1851, page 38:

     Model of a patent machine for winding yarn from the hank, upon the shuttlecope or pern.

   • 1894, The New Technical Educator: An Encyclopaedia of Technical Education, volume 3, page 234:

     In one division the spindles carry the bobbins revolving inside a kind of cup or cone fitting down upon the pern, and the latter is shaped to fit accurately this conical surface.

Derived terms

• perne (verb)
• perning

Etymology 2

19th century, after the taxonomical name Pernis (Cuvier 1816).

Noun

pern (plural perns)

1. A honey buzzard; Pernis apivorus.

Translations

Etymology 3

See pernancy.

Verb

pern (third-person singular simple present perns, present participle perning, simple past and past participle perned)

1. To take profit of; to make profitable.
   • 1608, Josuah Sylvester, Du Bartas his divine weekes and workes

     Those that, to ease their Purse, or please their Prince Pern their Profession

References

pern in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.

Cimbrian

Noun

pern

1. plural of per

English

Etymology 1

See warn.

Verb

wern (third-person singular simple present werns, present participle werning, simple past and past participle werned)

1. (obsolete, transitive) To refuse.

Etymology 2

From Middle English weren, equivalent to were +? -en.

Verb

wern

1. (obsolete) plural simple past of be
   • c. 1450, The Dicts and Sayings of the Philosophers

     And thanne he seide to other folkes that thei shulde seye somme goode thinges for to recomforte the lordes and the people, which werne in grete trouble as for the deth of the moste noble kinge that ever was.

   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book IV, Canto II:

     Her name was Agape whose children werne

     All three as one, the first hight Priamond,

     The second Dyamond, the youngest Triamond.

   • 1910, edited by Arthur Quiller-Couch, Glasgerion in The Oxford Book of English Verse

     Through the falseness of that lither lad

     These three lives wern all gone.

Anagrams

• Wren, wren

Middle English

Verb

wern

1. Alternative form of weren