Word: burn Part of Speech: verb Etymology: Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *bʰrewh₁-der. Proto-Indo-European *bʰrenw- Proto-Indo-European *bʰrénuh₁e-? Proto-Germanic *brinnaną Proto-West Germanic *brinnan Old English biernan ▲ Proto-Germanic *brinnaną Proto-Indo-European *-yeti Proto-Indo-European *-éyeti Proto-Germanic *-janą Proto-Germanic *brannijaną Proto-West Germanic *brannijan Old English bærnan Old Norse brennabor. Middle English brennen English burn From Middle English barnin, bearne, beerne, beornen, berne, bernen, birne, burne, burnen, bærnen, which arose via the metathesis of branne, brennen, brennyn, brynne, from Old English beornan, biernan, birnan, byrnan, from Proto-West Germanic *brinnan, from Proto-Germanic *brinnaną (“to burn”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰrenw-, present stem from *bʰrewh₁- (“to boil; to brew”). The East Midland forms were heavily influenced by Old Norse brenna, brinna (“to burn”). Doublet of brew. The late metathesis of East Midland brin- to birn- (and subsequently burn-) parallels the phonological development of bird and dirt from brid and drit. As this metathesized form became the Chancery Standard, it completely displaced the semantic functions and weak conjugation paradigm of the native Old English bærnan (weak), alongside the surviving remnants of byrnan (strong). Cognates Cognate with Cimbrian prönnan (“to burn”), Dutch barnen, branden (“to burn”), German brinnen (“to burn”), Luxembourgish brennen (“to burn”), Vilamovian brīn (“to burn”), Yiddish ברענען (brenen, “to burn”), Danish brænde (“to burn”), Faroese and Icelandic brenna (“to burn”), Norwegian Bokmål brenne (“to burn”), Norwegian Nynorsk brenna, brenne (“to burn”), Swedish brinna (“to burn”), Gothic 𐌱𐍂𐌹𐌽𐌽𐌰𐌽 (brinnan, “to burn”); also Cornish bros (“blazing, boiling”), Irish bruth (“heat; eruption; surf”), Welsh brwd (“eager, keen; passionate, zealous”), Latin defrutum (“grape must reduced by boiling”), Ancient Greek πορφύρω (porphúrō, “to boil, heave”), Albanian burth (“Cyclamen hederifolium; mouth burning”), Armenian աղբյուր (aġbyur, “fountain, spring”), Sanskrit भुर्वन् (bhurvan, “runnel, spring”). More at brew. Pronunciation: /bɜːn/, /bɔːn/, /bɝn/ 1. To cause to be consumed by fire. Labels: transitive Example: He burned his manuscript in the fireplace. Example: They haue ſlayne my baylye⸝ and diſtroyed the houſes of my men⸝ banyſſhed and chaſed away myne offycers, and brent yͤ houſe in the worlde that I loued beſt. 2. To be consumed by fire, or in flames. Labels: intransitive Example: He watched the house burn. Example: Plastics are energy-rich substances, which is why many of them burn so readily. Any organism that could unlock and use that energy would do well in the Anthropocene. Terrestrial bacteria and fungi which can manage this trick are already familiar to experts in the field. 3. To overheat so as to make unusable. Labels: transitive Example: He burned the toast. The blacksmith burned the steel. Example: with a heavy fire in the fire box there would be great danger of overheating, and thus injuring the boiler or of "burning" it, as it is ordinarily termed. 4. To become overheated to the point of being unusable. Labels: intransitive Example: The grill was too hot and the steak burned. 5. To make or produce by the application of fire or burning heat. Labels: transitive Example: to burn a hole; to burn letters into a block Example: I posted myself near a place where they had been burning charcoal, and very soon the hare came running past, close to where I was standing. 6. To give off light; to be lit up. Labels: intransitive Example: I knew that if a light was burning I should be able to see the window lit up from the yard at the back, although the gas itself would be out of sight. 7. To injure (a person or animal) with heat or chemicals that produce similar damage. Labels: transitive Example: She burned the child with an iron, and was jailed for ten years. 8. To cauterize. Labels: transitive 9. To sunburn. Labels: ambitransitive Example: She forgot to put on sunscreen and burned. 10. To consume, damage, or change the condition of, as if by action of fire or heat; to affect as fire or heat does. Labels: transitive Example: to burn the mouth with pepper Example: This tyrant fever burns me up. 11. To be hot, e.g. due to embarrassment. Labels: intransitive Example: The child’s forehead was burning with fever. Her cheeks burned with shame. Example: In ſlumbers oft for fere I quake / For hete & cold I burne & ſhake / For lake of ſlepe my hede dothe ake / What menys thys 12. To cause to combine with oxygen or other active agent, with evolution of heat; to consume; to oxidize. Labels: transitive Example: to burn iron in oxygen Example: A human being burns a certain amount of carbon at each respiration. 13. To combine energetically, with evolution of heat. Labels: dated Example: Copper burns in chlorine. 14. To write data to a permanent storage medium like a compact disc or a ROM chip. Labels: transitive Example: We’ll burn this program onto an EEPROM one hour before the demo begins. Example: At first they didn’t do anything by design, beyond writing songs and gigging around Sheffield, distributing homemade demo CDs at shows. Their canny friends burned copies to leave on buses, but more importantly, uploaded them to filesharing sites and set up a MySpace page. 15. To render subtitles into a video's content while transcoding it, making the subtitles part of the image (hardsubs). Labels: broadly, transitive Example: My old DVD player could play DivX files but didn't recognize the subtitle file, so I had to burn them in. 16. To betray. Labels: slang, transitive Example: The informant burned him. 17. To insult or defeat. Labels: slang, transitive Example: I just burned you again. 18. To waste (time); to waste money or other resources. Labels: transitive Example: We have an hour to burn. Example: The company has burned more than a million dollars a month this year. 19. In certain games, to approach near to a concealed object which is sought. Example: You’re cold… warm… hot… you’re burning! Example: Not being accustomed to make fine distinctions, or to appreciate magnanimity, they read his letters and speeches as if they read them not. They were not aware when they approached a heroic statement,—they did not know when they burned. 20. To accidentally touch a moving stone. Labels: intransitive 21. In pontoon, to swap a pair of cards for another pair, or to deal a dead card. Labels: transitive 22. To make an area of an image darker (when processing photographs in a darkroom, this is accomplished by increasing the exposure of that area to light). 23. To be converted to another element in a nuclear fusion reaction, especially in a star. Labels: intransitive 24. To discard. Labels: intransitive, slang 25. To shoot someone with a firearm. Labels: slang, transitive 26. To compromise (an agent's cover story). Labels: transitive Example: He had already burned his cover with Mrs. Phillips, and it was not a mistake he intended to make again. Example: Eventually they'd report back to Ryker, and he still didn't know if Ryker had personally burned his cover and sent assassins after him, or if the SSU had a mole. Until he knew for certain, he had to play this safe. 27. To blackmail. Labels: transitive Example: "How does Leipzig burn him precisely?" Enderby insisted. "What's the pressure? Dirty pix—well, okay. Karla's a puritan, so's Kirov. But I mean, Christ, this isn't the fifties, is it? […] 28. To desire or ache for (something); to focus on attaining (something). Labels: US, intransitive, slang