Advertisement
pern (v.)
"to move with a winding motion," a word used in poetry by Yeats from c. 1920, probably from a variant of dialectal pirn (n.) "small cylinder on which thread or yarn is wound (mid-15c.), which seems to have survived in dialects in Celtic parts of Britain. It is perhaps from prin "a twig, shoot of a tree" (c.1400), itself a variant of prene "a nail, spike," from Old English preon.
updated on April 12, 2020
Advertisement
Advertisement
Dictionary entries near pern
permissive
permit
permutate
permutation
permute
pern
pernicious
pernickety
perorate
peroration
peroxide