Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A primitive hand-turned grain mill.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A stone hand-mill for grinding grain. The most usual form consists of two circular flat stones, the upper one pierced in the center, and revolving on a wooden or metal pin inserted in the lower. In using the quern the grain is dropped with one hand into the central opening, while with the other the upper stone is revolved by means of a stick inserted in a small hole near the edge.
- n. The old hand-mill, or quern, such as Pennant sketched the Hebrides women grinding with in the last century, has not yet gone out; Dr. Mitchell says there are thousands of them at work in Scotland, where still
- n. A hand-mill used for grinding pepper, mustard, and the like. Such querns were used even on the table, and as early as the sixteenth century.
- To grind.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A mill for grinding grain, the upper stone of which was turned by hand; -- used before the invention of windmills and watermills.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a primitive stone mill for grinding corn by hand
Etymologies
- Middle English querne, from Old English cweorn; see gwerə-1 in Indo-European roots.
Examples
“It's all one where I got it from; you see the quern is a good one, and the mill-stream never freezes, that's enough.”
“And Parkinson's account is to the same effect: "The seeds hereof, ground between two stones, fitted for the purpose, and called a quern, with some good vinegar added to it to make it liquid and running, is that kind of Mustard that is usually made of all sorts to serve as sauce both for fish and flesh.”
“It's all one where I got it from; you see the quern is a good one, and the mill-stream never freezes, that's enough.”
“The feeding apparatus consists of a kind of quern for grinding corn, especially maize,”
To the Gold Coast for Gold A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Volume I
“Miryam sweeps the milled wheat out of her quern, pours in a new load of kernels.”
“She must make the butter and the cheese, grind the wheat in the quern, make and bake the bread, and in all ways earn her livelihood hard enough.”
“We stopped at a little hut, where we saw an old woman grinding with the quern, the ancient Highland instrument, which it is said was used by the Romans, but which, being very slow in its operation, is almost entirely gone into disuse.”
“Switch grass which is an energy topic I knew nothing about until about a year and a half ago when I started hearing speakers talk about diluted crispness of turning to quern based ethanol which is really energy intensity and ignoring things like switch grass.”
“If we really get serious about all of the bio-fuels outside quern based ethanol.”
“Coming up beside her, he looked with interest at her own small paper factory: a dozen big, fired-clay basins, each filled with scraps of used paper, worn-out scraps of silk and cotton, flax fibers, the soft pith of cattail reeds, and anything else she could get her hands on that might be useful, torn to shreds or ground small in a quern.”
A Breath of Snow and Ashes
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘quern’.
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Q words
Ever get stuck with the random bunch of letters and a q and not know any words? Well, maybe this will help.
quire, quais, quai, queer, quoit, quitrent, quit, quipster, question, quest, questing, quests and 208 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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Archaeology
Words for shovelbums!
trowel, mattock, chopper, n-transform, c-transform, taphonomy, processual, post-processual, microarchaeology, site, horizon, battleship curve and 33 more...
chained_bear "Particularly since the getting of coffee would involve a trip to the stream for water, making up the campfire—oh God, the wood would be damp, even if the fire hadn't gone completely out—grinding the coffee in a stone quern and brewing it, while wet leaves blew round my ankles and drips from overhanging tree branches slithered down my neck."
—Diana Gabaldon, The Fiery Cross (NY: Bantam Dell, 2001), 6 Jan 18, 2010
jennarenn I first ran across this word while working in a reading group with my second grade students. Who writes for seven- and eight-year olds with an archaic word like quern? Feb 9, 2007