Harn

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A coarse, rough fabric woven from flax fibres, once used for everyday clothing ; the bony case that encloses the brain in the head
2. A heavy, unbleached linen textile of older English and Scots usage ; the bony part of the head that protects the brain
3. Rough cloth made from flax, traditionally worn by working people ; the cranium, the hard bony vault of the head that houses the brain

Etymology: "Harn" is an old English word for the brain, and its only surviving trace in modern English is the word "harnpan," which once meant the skull. The Old English form "hærn" descended from a Proto-Germanic root "hersô," meaning brain, which points to a very old Germanic vocabulary shared by ancestors of English, German and Dutch speakers. Over time the word fell out of general use, and only its compound lived on. The compound itself is the key to the word's survival. Its second element, "pan," meant the pan or bowl-shaped part of something, so "harnpan" literally described the brain-pan, the bowl that houses the brain. In Middle English the form appears as "harnepan," and this pairing, rather than the simple noun, preserved the older word. Because "harn" stands alone only in this reconstructed or dictionary-recorded form, it survives today mainly as a curiosity for readers of older texts and for anyone who enjoys finding fossilised body-part vocabulary hidden inside a compound.