English Dictionary

URN

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does urn mean? 

URN (noun)
  The noun URN has 2 senses:

1. a large vase that usually has a pedestal or feetplay

2. a large pot for making coffee or teaplay

  Familiarity information: URN used as a noun is rare.


 Dictionary entry details 


URN (noun)


Sense 1

Meaning:

A large vase that usually has a pedestal or feet

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Hypernyms ("urn" is a kind of...):

vase (an open jar of glass or porcelain used as an ornament or to hold flowers)


Sense 2

Meaning:

A large pot for making coffee or tea

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Hypernyms ("urn" is a kind of...):

pot (metal or earthenware cooking vessel that is usually round and deep; often has a handle and lid)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "urn"):

coffee urn (an urn in which coffee is made and kept hot)

samovar (a metal urn with a spigot at the base; used in Russia to boil water for tea)

tea urn (an urn in which tea is brewed and from which it is served)


 Context examples 


"What delightful enthusiasm!" and he leaned against a tall urn with an air of entire satisfaction.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

The solemn procession, headed by Baddeley, of tea-board, urn, and cake-bearers, made its appearance, and delivered her from a grievous imprisonment of body and mind.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

But the Doctor himself was the idol of the whole school: and it must have been a badly composed school if he had been anything else, for he was the kindest of men; with a simple faith in him that might have touched the stone hearts of the very urns upon the wall.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

On going down in the morning, I found my aunt musing so profoundly over the breakfast table, with her elbow on the tray, that the contents of the urn had overflowed the teapot and were laying the whole table-cloth under water, when my entrance put her meditations to flight.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Here Meg meant to have a fountain, shrubbery, and a profusion of lovely flowers, though just at present the fountain was represented by a weather-beaten urn, very like a dilapidated slopbowl, the shrubbery consisted of several young larches, undecided whether to live or die, and the profusion of flowers was merely hinted by regiments of sticks to show where seeds were planted.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

I had no pleasure in thinking, any more, of the grave old broad-leaved aloe-trees, which remained shut up in themselves a hundred years together, and of the trim smooth grass-plot, and the stone urns, and the Doctor's walk, and the congenial sound of the Cathedral bell hovering above them all.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

The schoolroom was a pretty large hall, on the quietest side of the house, confronted by the stately stare of some half-dozen of the great urns, and commanding a peep of an old secluded garden belonging to the Doctor, where the peaches were ripening on the sunny south wall.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Doctor Strong looked almost as rusty, to my thinking, as the tall iron rails and gates outside the house; and almost as stiff and heavy as the great stone urns that flanked them, and were set up, on the top of the red-brick wall, at regular distances all round the court, like sublimated skittles, for Time to play at.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)



 Learn English with... Proverbs 
"There are too many chiefs and not enough Indians." (English proverb)

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