tarn
A small mountain lake, especially in Northern England.
Noun
- A small mountain lake, especially in Northern England.
- Thou Wind, that ravest without, / Bare craig, or mountain-tairn, or blasted tree, / Or pine-grove whither woodman never clomb, / Or lonely house, long held the witches' home, / Methinks were fitter instruments for thee,...
- It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene [of the House of Usher], of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its...
- Tarns are found in some of the vales, and are numerous upon the mountains. A Tarn, in a Vale, implies, for the most part, that the bed of the vale is not happily formed; that the water of the brooks can neither wholly...
- One of many small mountain lakes or ponds.
- It [the caribou] makes a fine, bold study on the foreground of an evening scene among the mountain tarns of Northern Idaho, as it fulfils the ideal description of the stag given by [Walter] Scott and other writers. -...
- Have you ever been swimming in glacial water – water turned milky blue or deep maroon by minerals and deposits seized by the glacier as it ponderously made its way across a continent? You would have been high atop a...
- Off to either side of the road [Beartooth Highway], unforgettable mountain scenes arise beneath crisp mountain skies. Here is alpine country at its best, complete with lakes and tarns set amid truly rugged promontories....
Origin
From Middle English terne, tarne (“lake; pond, pool”), from Old Norse tjǫrn (“a small lake without tributaries”), from Proto-Germanic *ternō (“water hole”), perhaps related to *turnaz (“bitter, embittered”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *der- (“to separate, split; to crack, shatter”). The word is cognate with Danish tjern, Faroese tjørn (“pond”), Icelandic tjörn (“pond”), Norwegian Bokmål tjern (“small forest or mountain lake”) (Norwegian Nynorsk tjern, tjørn), Swedish tjärn (“small forest lake”).