Definition of "urn"

urn

/ɜːn/

noun
plural urns
1. A vase with a footed base.
  Quotations
  A rustic, digging in the ground by Padua, […] found an urn, or earthen pot, in which there was another urn.
  1648, John Wilkins, Mathematical Magick
  His scattered limbs with my dead body burn, / And once more join us in the pious urn.
  1700, [John] Dryden, “Canace to Macareus”, in Fables Ancient and Modern; […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […]
  Mary Fibbs and all her friends start making coughing noises whenever I come near them, and then they all giggle and Mary says Grandfather mixes his cough medicine in the urns on top of the gate posts after dark with his umbrella, and now Jessamy!
  1967, Barbara Sleigh, Jessamy, Sevenoaks, Kent: Bloomsbury, published 1993, page 47
2. A metal vessel for serving tea or coffee.
3. A vessel for the ashes or cremains of a deceased person.
  Quotations
  So draw him home to those that mourn⁠In vain; a favourable speed⁠Ruffle thy mirror’d mast, and leadThro’ prosperous floods his holy urn.
  1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], canto IX
4. (figurative) Any place of burial; the grave.
  Quotations
  Or lay these bones in an unworthy urn, / Tombless, with no remembrance over them.
  1599, William Shakespeare, “The Life of Henry the Fift”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act I, scene ii]
5. (historical, Roman antiquity) A measure of capacity for liquids, containing about three gallons and a half, wine measure. It was half the amphora, and four times the congius.
6. (botany) A hollow body shaped like an urn, in which the spores of mosses are contained; a spore case; a theca.
verb
third-person singular simple present urns, present participle urning, simple past and past participle urned
1. (transitive) To place in an urn.

Definition of "urn"

urn

noun

Quotations

Quotations

Quotations

verb