intern
Pluralinterns
Verbinterns, interning, interned
Pluralinterns
Formsinterns, interning, interned
- 1A student or recent graduate who works in a field in order to gain practical experience in their chosen profession.
The intern compiled research summaries for the marketing team every afternoon.
Several interns competed for the one full-time position at the end of the program.
Similartrainee, apprentice
- 2To work as a trainee in a field, usually with little or no pay or the legal benefits of employment, for the purpose of furthering one's education.
Many students intern at hospitals to gain hands-on experience before graduating.
She interned at a law firm for six months without pay.
Similartrain, apprentice
Note
The verb grows out of the trainee noun, and it never takes an object. You intern at a place, as in "I'll be interning at Universal Studios this summer." That intransitive pattern is the quickest way to tell it from the detention verb, which always has someone being interned. Compare "she interned at a law firm" with "they were interned in a camp."
- 3In medicine, a student or recent graduate who works in a hospital to complete the last stage of training.
The intern presented the patient's chart to the attending physician during morning rounds.
First-year interns rotate through several departments before choosing a specialty.
- 4Sayin-TURNUS/ɪnˈtɝn/UK/ɪnˈtɜːn/To hold someone in confinement, usually without a trial.
The authorities interned thousands of citizens deemed a security risk.
During the conflict, officials moved to intern anyone suspected of disloyalty.
Similardetain, imprison, confine, incarcerate, hold
Note
Mass detention is its home ground: the US government interning thousands of Japanese-Americans during World War II is the classic case. The verb takes the people held as its object, and the passive is common, often with in naming the place ("interned in areas remote from" the coast). Herbert Daniel's 1989 open letter to Fidel Castro extends it to isolating people who tested positive for HIV. Wherever it appears, the word implies confinement without the ordinary process of a trial.
- 5A person who is held in confinement, either by force or voluntarily.
The camp's interns organized lessons and concerts to pass the time.
An intern who cooperated with the guards was given lighter duties.
Similardetainee, prisoner, inmate, captive
Note
The confinement noun comes from the French verb interner. It shares its spelling with the workplace trainee, which comes instead from French interne, "inner." Both lines lead back to Latin internus, "within," so the two nouns are cousins rather than one word. Only context tells them apart: a camp's interns are being held, while an office's interns are being trained.
- 6Sayin-TURNUS/ɪnˈtɝn/UK/ɪnˈtɜːn/To confine foreign military personnel who enter the state's territory, holding them within prescribed limits during wartime.
Switzerland interned aircrews that strayed across its border during the war.
A neutral state may intern enemy troops who enter its territory until the fighting ends.
Oppositerelease
Note
A wartime word whose subject is a state, most often a neutral one: the Swiss government interned Italian soldiers who had strayed onto its territory. The French interner, from interne "inner", carries the image of holding someone within bounds. Unlike the general "imprison" meaning, the people held here are foreign troops, and what confines them is a set of prescribed limits rather than a prison.
- 7Sayin-TURNUS/ɪnˈtɝn/UK/ɪnˈtɜːn/To internalize a value, especially by storing one shared copy that all identical instances point to.
The runtime interns string literals automatically when the program loads.
Developers can intern frequently used keys to speed up comparisons.
Note
Interning trades a lookup for savings. Once each distinct value, typically a string, exists only once, duplicates cost no extra memory, and equality can be checked by identity. Mark Schmidt and Simon Robinson's Microsoft Visual C# .NET 2003 Developer's Cookbook (2004) notes that strings assigned from a literal in code are interned automatically. The object is always a value, never a person, and the verb is often used in the passive: strings are interned.
Less common meaning
- 8Relating to or located on the inside; internal.
The physician noted some intern bleeding that required attention.
Man was made after Gods image, which must be understood of the intern graces of the Soule
1640, James Howell, ΔΕΝΔΡΟΛΟΓΊΑ [DENDROLOGIA]. Dodona’s GroveNote
An adjective that modern writers have left behind in favor of internal or inner. James Howell could still write of "the intern graces of the Soule" in his Dendrologia: Dodona's Grove (1640). It compares with more and most (more intern, most intern) rather than taking -er. A reader meeting it in an older text should read it as an adjective meaning "inner," not as the noun for a trainee.
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Practice
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Origins
From French interner, from interne ("inner, internal"), which comes from Latin internus ("within, internal").
From French interne ("inner, internal"), from Latin internus ("within, internal"), which comes from inter ("between").