tarn means A department of Occitania, France. Capital and largest city: Albi (INSEE code 81).
tarn is pronounced /tɑːn/.
Why “tarn” is a great word
A small, steep-banked mountain lake or pool, typically one formed by glacial activity in a cirque. From Middle English terne, tarne, from Old Norse tjǫrn ('a small lake without tributaries'), from Proto-Germanic *ternō ('water hole'); first recorded in English place-names by the late 12th century and in general use by the late 14th century. Unlike a lake, which sprawls and gathers rivers, or a pond, which idles placidly in lowland meadows, a tarn is a vessel of stark containment. It is water with no river feeding it, no stream leaving it, only the slow drip of melt and rain; it is the dark, perfect stillness of melted ice held in a granite hollow; it is the sudden, glassy eye that mirrors only clouds and crags—a profound silence, a remnant of immense force now resting in absolute quiet, a pocket of permanence in a world of downward flow.
Etymology
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”).
name
- A department of Occitania, France. Capital and largest city: Albi (INSEE code 81).
- A right tributary of the Garonne in southwestern France, flowing through the departments of Lozère, Aveyron, Tarn, Haute-Garonne and Tarn-et-Garonne.
noun
- A small mountain lake, especially in Northern England.
- One of many small mountain lakes or ponds.
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