Other forms: cairns
A cairn is a pile of stones built to mark a route or a summit. Build a cairn, follow the cairns, a summit cairn.
On a mountain in cloud they are the only navigation there is, which is why adding a stone is a courtesy and building new ones where none are needed is not. The word is Gaelic, and cairn terriers were bred to work among them.
1nouncairnA pile of stones built to mark a route or a summit.
“Walkers add a stone to the cairn when they reach the top of the mountain.”
cairn is a marker.
Scottish Gaelic carn names a heap of stones, from a Celtic root.
Proto-Indo-European
*ḱerh₂- — horn
Proto-Celtic
*karnos
Old Irish
carn
Scottish Gaelic
càrn
Scots
cairn
English, today
cairn
From Scots cairn, from Scottish Gaelic càrn, from Old Irish carn, from Proto-Celtic karnos, from Proto-Indo-European ḱerh₂- (“horn”). Compare Welsh carn, kw carn. a doublet of carn and horn.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA