Other forms: learning, learned, learns
To learn is to get new knowledge or a new skill. Learn a language, learn to drive, learn from your mistakes.
The past tense is learned or learnt, both correct, with learnt commoner in Britain. Learn takes to plus a verb — learn to swim — or a direct object. Note learned, pronounced with two syllables, which is an adjective meaning scholarly; learn by heart; and that in non-standard English learn is sometimes used to mean teach — I will learn you — which was standard until about the eighteenth century.
1verblearnTo get new knowledge or a new skill.~98%
“She learned Portuguese in about eighteen months.”
2verbfindTo find something out.~2%
“They learned about it from a letter that arrived four years late.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 10 sentences found in the wild and placed 10 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
learn is a gaining of knowledge.
Old English leornian meant both to learn and, occasionally, to teach — the two were one verb, and the teaching sense survived in dialect for centuries after standard English separated them.
Old English
leornian
Middle English
lernen
English, today
learn
Built from
From Middle English lernen, from Old English leornian. From Middle English lernen (“to learn", also, "to teach"”), from Old English leornian (“to learn", rarely also, "to teach”), from Proto-West Germanic liʀnōn, from Proto-Germanic lizaną, from Proto-Indo-European (le-)lóys-e, stative from the root leys- (“track, furrow, trace, trail”). The spelling with ⟨ea⟩ is of Early Modern English origin and reflects a lengthening of to /eː/ before in Late Old English or Early Middle English, then later lowering to; the modern pronunciation reflects still later reshortening.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA