worn

By analogy to past participles like torn from tear and sworn from swear.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /wɔːn/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /wɔɹn/

• Audio (General American):

  (file)

• (rhotic, without the horse–hoarse merger) IPA^(key): /wo(ː)ɹn/
• (non-rhotic, without the horse–hoarse merger) IPA^(key): /woən/
• Homophone: warn (horse–hoarse merger)
• Rhymes: -ɔː(ɹ)n

worn (comparative more worn, superlative most worn)

1. Damaged and shabby as a result of much use.
   • 1857, Herman Melville, chapter XVIII, in The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade:

     Upon this, an unhappy-looking woman, in a sort of mourning, neat, but sadly worn, hid her face behind a meagre bundle, and was heard to sob.

2. Worn out; exhausted.
   • 1889, The Wesley Naturalist, volume 2, page 143:

     Preëminently is the Lake District suited for the jaded and worn, who seek in solitude and amidst scenery unmoiled and unsullied by human artifice, refreshment alike of body and spirit.

worn

1. past participle of wear

• worne (obsolete)

• Norw., rown

worn

1. alternative form of weren

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

• IPA^(key): /worn/, [worˠn]

worn m

1. great many, multitude
2. crowd, swarm, band, flock
   • 10th century, The Wanderer:

     Sē þonne þisne wealsteal · wīse ġeþōhte
     ond þis deorce līf · dēope ġeondþenċeð,
     frōd in ferðe, · feor oft ġemon
     wælsleahta worn, · ond þās word ācwið:

     Then he deeply thinks over this wall-place
     and this dark life with wise thought,
     shrewd in mind, oft recalls the long bygone
     swarm of slaughters, and utters these words:

Strong a-stem:

• Joseph Bosworth, T. Northcote Toller (1898) “worn”, in An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, second edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press.