Learn
verbTo gain knowledge or a skill through study, experience, or being taught.
How to spell learn
5 letters · 1 syllable
How to pronounce learn
What does learn mean?
- verbTo gain knowledge or a skill through study, experience, or being taught.
Learn in a sentence
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She wants to learn a second language before the trip.
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New staff must learn the safety procedures during their first week.
Where does learn come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
This word comes from the Old English verb leornian, which meant 'to get knowledge, to be cultivated, to study'. It traces back to a Proto-Germanic root liznojan that carried the sense of following or pursuing a track, and it is closely tied to the same family that gave us 'lore', meaning accumulated knowledge or teaching. In its older usage the word could also mean 'to teach', a sense that survives only in nonstandard speech today, as in 'that will learn you'. The spelling settled with the 'ea' vowel pair that English often uses for this sound, the same pattern seen in 'earn', 'heard', and 'yearn'. Because the everyday meaning has stayed so stable for over a thousand years, the word is rarely a source of spelling trouble.
How the word is built
- learn (Old English leornian: to get knowledge), a single Germanic root with no prefix or suffix in its base form
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