Wren

How to spell wren

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce wren

What does wren mean?

1. nounA very small, brown songbird known for its loud song and cocked tail.

Wren in a sentence

• A tiny wren darted into the hedge by the garden wall.

• The wren built its nest inside an old kettle in the shed.

Where does wren come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a native English word, descending from the Old English wrenna or wrænna, the name for the tiny brown bird. The same little creature was known across the early Germanic languages, with related forms such as Old High German wrendo, though the ultimate root is obscure and its literal meaning is now lost. The spelling preserves an initial w that English speakers stopped pronouncing centuries ago, the same silent cluster that survives in words like 'write', 'wrist' and 'wrong'. Because the bird is so small, the wren became a byword for tininess in country speech, and it once featured in old midwinter folk customs across Britain and Ireland. The trap for modern writers is precisely that vanished w: the word sounds exactly like 'ren', so the spelling has to be remembered rather than heard.

How the word is built

• wren (single Old English root; the silent w- is original, not a prefix)