acorn
pronunciation
How to pronounce acorn in British English:
UK [ˈeɪkɔːn]
How to pronounce acorn in American English:
US [ ˈeɪkɔːrn]
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- Noun:
- fruit of the oak tree: a smooth thin-walled nut in a woody cup-shaped base
Word Origin
- acorn
- acorn: [OE] Acorn has no etymological connection with oak; its nearest linguistic relative in English is probably acre. The Old English word was æcern, which may well have derived from æcer ‘open land’ (the related Middle High German ackeran referred to beech mast as well as acorns, and Gothic akran developed more widely still, to mean simply ‘fruit’).There are cognate words in other, non- Germanic, Indo-European languages, such as Russian yagoda ‘berry’ and Welsh aeron ‘fruits’. Left to develop on its own, æcern would have become modern English achern, but the accidental similarity of oak and corn have combined to reroute its pronunciation.=> acre
- acorn (n.)
- Old English æcern "nut," common Germanic (cognates: Old Norse akarn, Dutch aker, Low German ecker "acorn," German Ecker, Gothic akran "fruit"), originally the mast of any forest tree, and ultimately related (via notion of "fruit of the open or unenclosed land") to Old English æcer "open land," Gothic akrs "field," Old French aigrun "fruits and vegetables" (from Frankish or some other Germanic source); see acre. The sense gradually restricted in Low German, Scandinavian, and English to the most important of the forest produce for feeding swine, the mast of the oak tree. Spelling changed 15c.-16c. by folk etymology association with oak (Old English ac) and corn (n.1).
Example
- 1. You 've been ashamed since the acorn thing .
- 2. Leafcutter ants , which can produce similar colonies in a space the size of an acorn , have created such societies all governed by a queen all over the americas .
- 3. What about the acorn planted in the forest ?
- 4. The oak , the giant tree itself , is potentially within the acorn , but it does not yet exist .
- 5. Acorn factory is a physics simulation game .