earn
pronunciation
How to pronounce earn in British English:
UK [ɜːn]
How to pronounce earn in American English:
US [ɜːrn]
-
- Verb:
- earn on some commercial or business transaction; earn as salary or wages
- acquire or deserve by one's efforts or actions
Word Origin
- earn
- earn: [OE] The underlying sense of earn is ‘gain as a result of one’s labour’. It comes from a prehistoric West Germanic verb *aznōjan, which was based on the noun *aznu ‘work, labour’. This seems often to have been used specifically for ‘work in the fields’, for several other related forms in the Germanic languages, such as German ernte and Gothic asans, denote ‘harvest’, which in some cases has been metaphorically extended to apply to ‘autumn’.
- earn (v.)
- Old English earnian "deserve, earn, merit, labor for, win, get a reward for labor," from Proto-Germanic *aznon "do harvest work, serve" (source also of Old Frisian esna "reward, pay"), denominative verb from *azno "labor" especially "field labor" (source of Old Norse önn "work in the field," Old High German arnon "to reap"), from PIE root *es-en- "harvest, fall" (cognates: Old High German aren "harvest, crop," German Ernte "harvest," Old English ern "harvest," Gothic asans "harvest, summer," Old Church Slavonic jeseni, Russian osen, Old Prussian assanis "autumn"). Also from the same root are Gothic asneis, Old High German esni "hired laborer, day laborer," Old English esne "serf, laborer, man." Related: Earned; earning.
Example
- 1. Before it was legitimate to earn obscenely high salaries .
- 2. Left-handed women earn no more than anyone else .
- 3. The students were not doing odd jobs to earn beer money .
- 4. As people earn more money , their day-to-day happiness rises .
- 5. She had to budget her commands and earn their respect .