burn

• (General American) IPA^(key): /bɝn/, enPR: bûrn
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /bɜːn/, enPR: bûrn

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)n
• Homophone: Bern

From Middle English bernen, birnen, from Old English byrnan, biernan, beornan (“to burn”), metathesis from Proto-Germanic *brinnaną (“to burn”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰrenw- (compare Middle Irish brennim (“drink up”), bruinnim (“bubble up”)), present stem from *bʰreu-, *bʰru- (compare Middle Irish bréo (“flame”), Albanian burth (“Cyclamen hederifolium, mouth burning”), Sanskrit भुरति (bhurati, “moves quickly, twitches, fidgets”)). More at brew.

burn (plural burns)

1. A physical injury caused by heat, cold, electricity, radiation or caustic chemicals.

   She had second-degree burns from falling in the bonfire.

2. A sensation resembling such an injury.

   chili burn from eating hot peppers

3. The act of burning something.

   They're doing a controlled burn of the fields.

   • 2006, Edwin Black, chapter 2, in Internal Combustion‎:

     One typical Grecian kiln engorged one thousand muleloads of juniper wood in a single burn.

4. (slang) An intense non-physical sting, as left by shame or an effective insult.
5. (slang) An effective insult, often in the expression sick burn (excellent or badass insult).
6. Physical sensation in the muscles following strenuous exercise, caused by build-up of lactic acid.

   One and, two and, keep moving; feel the burn!

7. (Britain, chiefly prison slang) tobacco
   • 2002, Tom Wickham, “A Day In The Wrong Life”, in Julian Broadhead, Laura Kerr, editor, Prison Writing‎, Sixteenth Edition edition, Waterside Press, →ISBN, page 26:

     TOM: I’m serious bruv. Put my burn and lighter and all that in my jeans please and give them here, then press the cell bell.

   • 2006, S. Drake, A Cry for Help‎, Chipmunkapublishing ltd, →ISBN, Chapter 7, page 94:

     “Any of you want to borrow some burn,” asked a scarred inmate known as Bull.

   • 2006, Peter Squires, editor, Community Safety: Critical Perspectives on Policy and Practice‎, Policy Press, →ISBN Invalid ISBN, page 23:

     It was like no one was looking out for me, and the older kids used to take the piss ...they were always threatening me and taking my burn [tobacco] […]

   • 2010, Stephen Fry, The Fry Chronicles:

     As the prison week ended and the less careful inmates began to run out of burn they went through a peculiar begging ritual that I, never one to husband resources either, was quick to learn.

8. The operation or result of burning or baking, as in brickmaking.

   They have a good burn.

9. A disease in vegetables; brand.

burn (third-person singular simple present burns, present participle burning, simple past and past participle burned or (mostly Commonwealth) burnt)

1. (transitive) To cause to be consumed by fire.

   He burned his manuscript in the fireplace.

   • 2013 June 29, “Unspontaneous combustion”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8842, page 29:

     Since the mid-1980s, when Indonesia first began to clear its bountiful forests on an industrial scale in favour of lucrative palm-oil plantations, “haze” has become an almost annual occurrence in South-East Asia. The cheapest way to clear logged woodland is to burn it, producing an acrid cloud of foul white smoke that, carried by the wind, can cover hundreds, or even thousands, of square miles.

2. (intransitive) To be consumed by fire, or in flames.

   He watched the house burn.

   • 2013 July 20, “Welcome to the plastisphere”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8845:

     Plastics are energy-rich substances, which is why many of them burn so readily. Any organism that could unlock and use that energy would do well in the Anthropocene. Terrestrial bacteria and fungi which can manage this trick are already familiar to experts in the field.

3. (transitive) To overheat so as to make unusable.

   He burned the toast. The blacksmith burned the steel.

4. (intransitive) To become overheated to the point of being unusable.

   The grill was too hot and the steak burned.

5. (transitive) To make or produce by the application of fire or burning heat.

   to burn a hole;  to burn letters into a block

6. (transitive) To injure (a person or animal) with heat or chemicals that produce similar damage.

   She burned the child with an iron, and was jailed for ten years.

7. (transitive, surgery) To cauterize.
8. (transitive, intransitive) To sunburn.

   She forgot to put on sunscreen and burned.

9. (transitive) To consume, injure, or change the condition of, as if by action of fire or heat; to affect as fire or heat does.

   to burn the mouth with pepper

   • (Can we date this quote?) William Shakespeare

     This tyrant fever burns me up.

   • (Can we date this quote?) John Dryden

     This dry sorrow burns up all my tears.

   • Epistle of James 4:2 (AMP)

     You are jealous and covet [what others have] and your desires go unfulfilled; [so] you become murderers. [To hate is to murder as far as your hearts are concerned.] You burn with envy and anger and are not able to obtain [the gratification, the contentment, and the happiness that you seek], so you fight and war. You do not have, because you do not ask.

10. (intransitive) To be hot, e.g. due to embarrassment.

    The child's forehead was burning with fever.  Her cheeks burned with shame.

11. (chemistry, transitive) To cause to combine with oxygen or other active agent, with evolution of heat; to consume; to oxidize.

    A human being burns a certain amount of carbon at each respiration.  to burn iron in oxygen

12. (chemistry, dated) To combine energetically, with evolution of heat.

    Copper burns in chlorine.

13. (transitive, computing) To write data to a permanent storage medium like a compact disc or a ROM chip.

    We’ll burn this program onto an EEPROM one hour before the demo begins.

14. (transitive, slang) To betray.

    The informant burned him.

15. (transitive, slang) To insult or defeat.

    I just burned you again.

16. (transitive) To waste (time); to waste money or other resources.

    We have an hour to burn.

    The company has burned more than a million dollars a month this year.

17. In certain games, to approach near to a concealed object which is sought.

    You're cold... warm... hot... you're burning!

18. (intransitive, curling) To accidentally touch a moving stone.
19. (transitive, card games) In pontoon, to swap a pair of cards for another pair, or to deal a dead card.
20. (photography) To increase the exposure for certain areas of a print in order to make them lighter (compare dodge).
21. (intransitive, physics, of an element) To be converted to another element in a nuclear fusion reaction, especially in a star
22. (intransitive, slang, card games, gambling) To discard.

• combust

From Middle English burn, bourne, from Old English burne, burna (“spring, fountain”), from Proto-Germanic *brunnô, *brunō (compare West Frisian boarne, Dutch bron, German Brunnen), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰrew- (compare Albanian burim (“spring, fountain”) from buroj (“to pour, gush, derive”), Ancient Greek φρέαρ (phréar, “well, reservoir”), Old Armenian աղբիւր (ałbiwr, “fount”)). Doublet of bourn. More at brew.

burn (plural burns)

1. (Scotland, Northern England) A stream.
   • 1881, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Inversnaid

     THIS darksome burn, horseback brown,

     His rollrock highroad roaring down,

     In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam

     Flutes and low to the lake falls home.

   • 1881, Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque:

     He may pitch on some tuft of lilacs over a burn, and smoke innumerable pipes to the tune of the water on the stones.

   • 2008, James Kelman, Kieron Smith, Boy, Penguin 2009, page 105:

     When it was too heavy rain the burn ran very high and wide and ye could never jump it.

• bourn

• “burn” in Douglas Harper, Online Etymology Dictionary, 2001–2019.
• Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, Springfield, Massachusetts, G.&C. Merriam Co., 1967
• Northumberland Words, English Dialect Society, R. Oliver Heslop, 1893–4

burn

1. wood

• 1886, C. F. Armstrong (Edward Micklethwaite Curr, ed.), The Australian Race: Its Origins, Languages, Customs, Place of Landing in Australia, and the routes by which it spread itself over that continent

burn (plural burns)

1. A small river.