Secern

Quick meaning: Secern is a verb meaning To separate or set apart (someone or something from other persons or things).

Meaning

To separate or set apart (someone or something from other persons or things).

More Meanings

1. To separate (something from other things) in the mind; to discriminate, to distinguish.
2. Of a person or thing: to become separated from others.
3. To secrete a substance.
4. Synonym of secrete (“to extract or separate (a substance) from the blood, etc., for excretion or for the fulfilling of a physiological function”).

Example Sentences

[…] Birds bee commonly better Meat than Beaſts, becauſe their Fleſh doth aſſimilate more finely, and ſecerneth more ſubtilly.

[T]he mimosa nilotica secerns from its roots a fluid as offensive as that of assafœtida; in the sap of its step an astringent acid; its glands give forth gum arabic; and its flowers an odour of a very grateful fragrance.

'[T]is not ſo much a local and bodily ſecerning our ſelves from evil men that God requires (as the Donatiſts falſely taught) but a ſpiritual ſeparation in mind and affections, and from their ſins, more than from their perſons.

[T]he joint-glands themſelves grovv rigid, and ſecern leſs of their proper humour. Hence vvhen the gout falls upon people in years, it proves very ſevere, for vvant of a neceſſary quantity of that oleaginous matter to extinguiſh it.

Word Forms

• secerns
• secerning
• secerned
• secernest
• secernedst
• secerneth

Synonyms for secern

Depending on context, synonyms include allocate, appropriate, shelve, assign, dedicate, detach.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include distinguish, differentiate, severalize, tell, separate, discriminate.

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