From Middle English ernen, from Old English earnian, from Proto-West Germanic *aʀanōn, from Proto-Germanic *azanōną. This verb is denominal from the noun *azaniz (“harvest”).

• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: ûrn, IPA^(key): /ɜːn/
• (US) enPR: ûrn, IPA^(key): /ɝn/
• (Early Modern) IPA^(key): /ɛːrn/, /ɛrn/^[1]

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)n
• Homophones: ern, erne, urn

earn (third-person singular simple present earns, present participle earning, simple past and past participle earned or (chiefly UK) earnt)

1. (transitive) To gain (success, reward, recognition) through applied effort or work.

   You can have the s'mores: you earned them, clearing the walkway of snow so well.

   With their hard work and dedication, they earned respect and a seat at the table.

   • 1910, Emerson Hough, chapter II, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:

     Carried somehow, somewhither, for some reason, on these surging floods, were these travelers, of errand not wholly obvious to their fellows, yet of such sort as to call into query alike the nature of their errand and their own relations. It is easily earned repetition to state that Josephine St. Auban's was a presence not to be concealed.

   • 2011 November 12, “International friendly: England 1-0 Spain”, in BBC Sport:

     England will not be catapulted among the favourites for Euro 2012 as a result of this win, but no victory against Spain is earned easily and it is right they take great heart from their efforts as they now prepare to play Sweden at Wembley on Tuesday.

2. (transitive) To receive payment for work or for a role or position held (regardless of whether effort was applied or whether the remuneration is deserved or commensurate).

   He earns seven million dollars a year as CEO.  My bank account is only earning one percent interest.

   She earns more than forty thousand dollars a year in passive income from her parents' investments — that's what she gets before she even gets out of bed or lifts a finger.

   • 2015, Jason Zweig, The Devil's Financial Dictionary, PublicAffairs, →ISBN, page 1:

     After stuffing themselves and their clients full of dodgy mortgages at bogus prices with shoddy assertions of safety, many of the world's biggest banks toppled when housing prices fell. Meanwhile, financial executives whose irresponsible policies and slipshod oversight contributed to the collapse nevertheless earned—and kept—billions of dollars in bonuses, stock options, and other forms of incentive compensation. Many of them are still basking in baronial splendor, apparently unscathed even by the pangs of guilty conscience.

3. (intransitive) To receive payment for work.

   Now that you are earning, you can start paying me rent.

4. (transitive) To cause (someone) to receive payment or reward.

   My CD earns me six percent!

   In that era, all their long, hard, dangerous labor in the mines barely earned them even enough to eat!

   • 1965, James Holledge, What Makes a Call Girl?, London: Horwitz Publications, page 99:

     '[T]hough I earned her a lot of money, I have nothing but regrets for what I did.'

5. (transitive) To achieve by being worthy of.

   to earn a spot in the top 20

The verb has senses of "get because deserving" and "get whether deserving or not", but because to many ears it connotes the former meaning, writers and speakers sometimes resist using it for the latter meaning, choosing instead synonyms such as get, take in, or rake in.

• (gain through applied effort or work): deserve, merit, garner, win
• ((transitive) receive payment for work): get, take in, rake in
• ((intransitive) receive payment for work): rake it in
• (cause someone to receive payment or reward): yield, make, generate, render

Probably either:^[2]

• from Middle English erne, ernen (“to coagulate, congeal”) (chiefly South Midlands)  [and other forms], a metathetic variant of rennen (“to run; to coagulate, congeal”), from Old English rinnan (“to run”) (with the variants iernan, irnan) and Old Norse rinna (“to move quickly, run; of liquid: to flow, run; to melt”),^[3] both from Proto-Germanic *rinnaną, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₃er- (“to move, stir; to rise, spring”); or
• a back-formation from earning (“(Britain regional, archaic) rennet”).

earn (third-person singular simple present earns, present participle earning, simple past and past participle earned) (British, dialectal)

1. (transitive, archaic) To curdle (milk), especially in the cheesemaking process.

   Synonyms: run, (Northern England, Scotland) yearn

2. (intransitive, obsolete) Of milk: to curdle, espcially in the cheesemaking process.

A variant of yearn.^[4]

earn (third-person singular simple present earns, present participle earning, simple past and past participle earned)

1. (transitive, obsolete) To strongly long or yearn (for something or to do something).^[5]
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 3:

     And ever as he rode, his hart did earne / To prove his puissance in battell brave.

2. (intransitive, obsolete) To grieve.^[6]
   • 1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life of Henry the Fift”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene iii], page 75, column 2:

     [M]y manly heart doth erne. […] Boy, briſsle thy Courage vp: For Falſtaffe hee is dead, and wee muſt erne therefore.

earn (plural earns)

1. Alternative form of erne^[7]
   • 1805, Walter Scott, “(please specify the page)”, in The Lay of the Last Minstrel: A Poem, London: […] [James Ballantyne] for Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, […], and A[rchibald] Constable and Co., […], →OCLC:

     They gleamed on many a dusky tarn ,
     Haunted by the lonely earn

• nare, rean, Near, eRNA, Rane, near, Arne, Nera, erna

earn

1. (Early Middle English) Alternative form of ern (“eagle”)

From Proto-West Germanic *arō. The final /n/ is intrusive.

• IPA^(key): /æ͜ɑrn/, [æ͜ɑrˠn]

earn m

1. eagle
   • 10th century, Exeter Book Riddle 24‎^[2]:

     …Hwīlum iċ onhyrġe þone haswan earn, gūðfugles hlēoþor; hwīlum glidan reorde mūþe ġemǣne, hwīlum mǣwes song, þǣr iċ glado sitte.

     …Sometimes I imitate the grey eagle, a speech of war-bird; sometimes a kite's voice with common mouth, sometimes a gull's song when I sit gladful.

Strong a-stem:

• Middle English: ern, arn, aryn, eerne, eren, erne, eron, ærn, earn (Early Middle English)
  • English: erne
  • Scots: earn, ern, erne

From Old Frisian *ern, from Proto-West Germanic *arō.

• IPA^(key): /ˈɪə̯n/

earn c (plural earnen, diminutive earntsje)

1. eagle
2. (figuratively) miser

• “earn”, in Wurdboek fan de Fryske taal (in Dutch), 2011