Other forms: burned, burning, burns, burnt
To burn is to be on fire, or to hurt something with fire and heat. Wood burns in the grate, toast burns while you answer the phone, and you burn your fingers on the handle of the pan.
Burn is a noun as well: a burn is the injury or the mark that heat leaves, and hospitals have burns units. Your skin burns in the sun, your eyes burn in smoke, your face burns with shame — all of it without a flame anywhere. You burn fuel, you burn calories, and older computers burned files onto a disc. The past is burned or burnt, both correct, with British English preferring burnt in front of a noun: burnt toast. Watch what follows it, because the little words change everything: a house burns down, a letter burns up, and a person who works too hard burns out.
1verbburnTo be on fire; to give out flame and heat.~2%
“The fire burns better once the wood has dried out.”
2verbincinerateTo damage or destroy something with fire.~66%
“They burn the old branches at the bottom of the garden every autumn.”
synonyms: incinerate, torch
3verbscaldTo hurt or mark skin with heat, sun or chemicals.~2%
“Don't burn your hand on that tray.”
4nouninjuryAn injury or a mark left by heat, fire or acid.~26%
“She has a small burn on her wrist from the oven shelf.”
5verbuseTo use up fuel or energy.~2%
“A brisk walk uphill burns more than you would think.”
6verbfeelTo feel a fierce heat, or a fierce feeling.~2%
“His cheeks burn every time somebody tells that story.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 15 sentences found in the wild and placed 14 of them on a sense (1 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Burn and brew are the same old word. It runs back through Old English beornan to Proto-Germanic *brinnaną, to burn, and to a Proto-Indo-European root *bʰrewh₁-, to boil, to brew. The r once came before the vowel — Middle English said brennen — and the letters swapped places on the way to burn, exactly as brid became bird and drit became dirt. Old Norse brenna pushed the English word along.
Proto-Indo-European
*bʰrewh₁-
Middle English
brennen
English, today
burn
Built from
From Middle English brennen. 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”). a 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).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA