ENGLISH DICTIONARY

Urn

Definition, Meaning & Examples

Pronunciation /ɜːn/ · Part of speech noun

Quick meaning: Urn is a noun meaning A vase with a footed base.

Meaning

A vase with a footed base.

More Meanings

  1. A metal vessel for serving tea or coffee.
  2. A vessel for the ashes or cremains of a deceased person.
  3. (figurative) Any place of burial; the grave.
  4. (botany) A hollow body shaped like an urn, in which the spores of mosses are contained; a spore case; a theca.
  5. (transitive) To place in an urn.
  6. (historical, Roman antiquity) A measure of capacity for liquids, containing about three gallons and a half, wine measure. It was half the amphora, and four times the congius.

Example Sentences

Or lay these bones in an unworthy urn, / Tombless, with no remembrance over them.
His scattered limbs with my dead body burn, / And once more join us in the pious urn.
A rustic, digging in the ground by Padua, […]found an urn, or earthen pot, in which there was another urn.
So draw him home to those that mourn ⁠In vain; a favourable speed ⁠Ruffle thy mirror’d mast, and lead Thro’ prosperous floods his holy urn.

Word Forms

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include jar, samovar, ash, vase, cinerary, ossuarium.

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Sources & Attribution

FreeDictionaryAPI.com / Wiktionary · Original source · CC BY-SA 4.0

Dictionary data is provided by FreeDictionaryAPI.com and sourced from Wiktionary under its stated license.