erne

Pluralernes

1. 1
   nouncountable

   The white-tailed eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla), or more broadly any sea eagle of the genus Haliaeetus.

   The fisherman watched an erne snatch a salmon from the shallows.

   An erne nested on a high ledge overlooking the rocky coastline.

   Note

   An Old English bird name that never quite left the language. Earn meant "eagle," from a Germanic root that also sits inside the name Arnold. Applied to a single bird, it points to the sea eagles, above all the white-tailed eagle. Dean Amadon, reviewing in The Auk in 1985, calls it the old Anglo-Saxon name for the bird. Charles Kingsley's Hereward the Wake (1866) calls out "come erne from off the fen!"

2. 2
   noundialectalcountable

   An eagle, in poetic or regional use.

   High over the glen, an erne hung motionless against the gray sky.

   An erne wheeled above the crags as the storm gathered in the west.

   Similareagle

   Note

   Outside the bird books, the word stops being particular about genus. In verse and in regional speech, an erne is simply an eagle, and a phrase like the bald erne shows it slipping into a bird's name where eagle would normally stand. Poets reach for it as the older, plainer word. In strictly ornithological writing, it is safer to keep erne for the sea eagles.

3. 3
   verbobsolete

   To long or yearn for something.

   Note

   A verb of longing that has dropped out of English entirely. A writer today who means it will say long or yearn, and anyone meeting erne in an old text can read it that way. It only shares its spelling with the eagle word and comes from a separate source, so no image of birds or flight lies behind the feeling.

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