Sharn

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Dialect word for animal dung, especially the droppings of cattle, used in Scots and northern English speech
2. A Scots and northern English term for cow manure or the dung left by cattle in fields
3. Regional dialect noun meaning dung, most often the excrement of cows, found in Scottish and northern English usage

Etymology: Old English speakers called animal dung "sċearn," and that word has come down to Scots and northern English almost unchanged in sense. Its Middle English form was "schern," and the spelling "sharn" shows the same word still alive in northern dialects, where it has long named the droppings of cattle and other beasts. The word belongs to a family that reaches across the North Sea. Its Germanic ancestor, reconstructed as "*skarn," meant manure, and cognates survive in Icelandic, Danish, Swedish and North Frisian, all with the same sense of dung. Germanic has a related word in German "Harn," which means urine, a reminder of how closely the two substances were once grouped in farm vocabulary. A doublet of "skarn" also exists in English, so the two words are sisters from the same root. Where "skarn" has kept a wider, more general sense, "sharn" stayed rooted in the farmyard.