kern

• (UK) IPA^(key): /kɜːn/
• Rhymes: -ɜːɹn

From Middle English curn, cooren, variant forms of Middle English corn, see English corn and also Dutch kern, Old High German kerno, cherno, Middle High German kerne, kern, German Kern (“core, kernel”),
Old Norse kjarni, Icelandic kjarni, Danish kjerne, Swedish kärna (“core, kernel”); see also kernel.

• kirn, curn (Scotland)

kern (countable and uncountable, plural kerns)

1. (obsolete or dialectal) A corn; grain; kernel.
2. (obsolete or dialectal) The last handful or sheaf reaped at the harvest.
3. (obsolete or dialectal) The harvest home.

• kern-baby

• kernel

From French carne (“corner; projecting angle; quill of a pen”), from Latin cardinem (“hinge”)[1] or from Etymology 1. The verb is a back-formation from kerned, which is from the noun.

• kerne

kern (plural kerns)

1. (hot metal printing, typography) Any part of a letter which extends into the space used by another letter.
   • 1856, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, Odd Fellows' Literary Casket, Volumes 6-7, page 360,

     A few types have a portion of the face letter projecting over the body, as in the letter f ; this projection is called the kern, and in combination with other letters the projecting part generally extends over the next letter, as in fe. In those combinations, wherein the kern would come in contact with another letter, compound types are cast, as in the case of ff, fi, fl, ffi, ffl.

kern (third-person singular simple present kerns, present participle kerning, simple past and past participle kerned)

1. (typography, chiefly proportional font printing) To adjust the horizontal space between selected pairs of letters (characters or glyphs); to perform such adjustments to a portion of text, according to preset rules.
   • 2001, Constance J. Sidles, Graphic Designer's Digital Printing and PrePress Handbook, page 51,

     If you need to kern anything beyond the most commonly used pairs, you can use applications software such as Adobe PageMaker to customize pairs.

   • 2001, Bill Camarda, Special Edition Using Microsoft Word 2002, page 122,

     Especially consider kerning if you are printing on a relatively high-resolution printer, such as a 600-dpi (dots per inch) laser printer.

   • 2006, Tova Rabinowitz, Exploring Typography, page 320,

     Remember, the goal of kerning is to make letter pairs look natural, not necessarily to minimize letterspaces.

   • 2008, Terry Rydberg, Exploring Adobe InDesign CS4, page 98,

     You should kern letter pairs when spacing between characters is too wide or too narrow.

• kern pair

From Middle English kerne, from Middle Irish ceithern.

• kerne

kern (plural kerns)

1. (archaic or historical) A light-armed foot soldier of the ancient militia of Ireland and Scotland; in archaic contexts often used as a term of contempt.
   • c. 1599, William Shakespeare, The Life of Henry the Fifth, Act 3, Scene 7,

     O then belike she was old and gentle; and you rode like a kern of Ireland, your French hose off and in your strait strossers.

   • 1908, Sabine Baring-Gould, Devonshire Characters and Strange Events: "Lusty" Stucley,

     There he entertained Shan O'Neil, a famous, turbulent chief from Ireland, who late in this year visited Elizabeth's Court, where his train of kerns and gallowglasses, clothed in linen kilts dyed with saffron, made a great impression.

2. (obsolete) A boor; a low person.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Blount to this entry?)

3. (obsolete, Britain, law) An idler; a vagabond.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Wharton to this entry?)

kern (plural kerns)

1. Alternative form of quern

kern (plural kerns)

1. A churn.

• Renk

From Middle Dutch kerne, from Old Dutch *kerno, from Proto-Germanic *kernô.

• audio

  (file)

kern f (plural kernen, diminutive kerntje n)

1. nucleus, core
2. (physics) nucleus (of an atom)
3. (physics, in compounds) nuclear
4. (geology, astronomy) core (of the Earth, or any other celestial body)
5. (mathematics) kernel (of a function)
   • 1976, "Het eindexamen wiskunde II 1976", in Euclides. Maandblad voor de didactiek van de wiskunde. Orgaan van de Nederlandse Vereniging van Wiskundeleraren, vol. 52, issue 7, Wolters-Noordhoff, 274.

     Te bewijzen: er bestaat een k waarvoor beeldruimte en kern van A_k samenvallen.

     To be demonstrated: a k exists for which the image space and kernel of A_k coincide.

   • 2005, Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica, Vakantiecursus 2005. De schijf van vijf, 55.

     Hij kijkt dus of het ontvangen woord in de kern van de matrix zit.

     Therefore he checks whether the received word is contained in the matrix's kernel.

6. settlement, built-up area

From Middle Irish ceithern (“band or troop of soldiers or fighting men”).

kern m (genitive singular kern, plural kernyn)

1. (military) soldier, infantryman, yeoman
2. (chess) pawn

• (soldier, pawn): sidoor

• “ceithern” in Dictionary of the Irish Language, Royal Irish Academy, 1913–76.