Meaning

A vase with a footed base..

Definitions by Sense

1. A vase with a footed base.
2. A metal vessel for serving tea or coffee.
3. A vessel for the ashes or cremains of a deceased person.
4. (figurative) Any place of burial; the grave.
5. (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.
6. (botany) A hollow body shaped like an urn, in which the spores of mosses are contained; a spore case; a theca.
7. (transitive) To place in an urn.

Example Sentences

A rustic, digging in the ground by Padua, […]found an urn, or earthen pot, in which there was another urn.

His scattered limbs with my dead body burn, / And once more join us in the pious urn.

Mary Fibbs and all her friends start making coughing noises whenever I come near them, and then they all giggle and Mary says Grandfather mixes his cough medicine in the urns on top of the gate posts after dark with his umbrella, and now Jessamy!

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.

Or lay these bones in an unworthy urn, / Tombless, with no remembrance over them.

Word Forms

• urns
• urne
• urning
• urned

Related Words

When Should You Use Urn?

Use urn when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

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