Noun: quern
| Singular | quern |
| Plural | querns |
Sample Sentences
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She is shaking in ingredients from various small bottles and querns produced from the pockets of her robes, and from the drawer in the wooden table. [1978, Robert Nye, Merlin:]
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MacKie has noted that querns that were in use in Scotland up to the present day were about 450mm—600mm in diameter and that the lower stone was completely perforated to make it adjustable (MacKie 1987, 5). [2005, Anne Crone, Ewan Campbell, A Crannog of the First Millennium, AD: Excavations by Jack Scott at Loch Gloshan, Argyll, 1960, page 100:]
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Not surprisingly, different cultures discovered the suitability of various rock types for manufacturing querns and millstones. [2009, Charles D. Hockensmith, The Millstone Industry, page 212:]
Nouns inflected like quern
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
From Middle English quern, cwerne, from Old English cweorn (“quern, hand-mill, mill”), from Proto-Germanic *kwernō (“millstone”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʷréh₂wō (“heavy stone”), from *gʷréh₂us (“heavy”). Cognate with Swedish kvarn, Tocharian B kärweñe, Lithuanian girna, Russian жёрнов (žórnov, “millstone”). See: Middle English Nouns '
quern', Old English Nouns '
cweorn', Swedish Nouns '
kvarn', Russian Nouns '
жёрнов'.