BAIRN

[Dr. Goodword]

• bairn •

Pronunciation: bayrn • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun

Meaning: A child, a baby

Notes: Today's word has a healthy and happy brood itself. Bairnly "childish" is the adjective and adverb, which come with their own noun, bairnliness. Bairnhood is childhood and childishness is bairnliness. A family may be bairnless; if so, they suffer from bairnlessness.

In Play: This Good Word requires a keen awareness of whereabouts in use. In Scotland or Northern England (Yorkshire) you will be safe to use it, or wherever the Scottish congregate. In The Strength of the Strong, Jack London wrote, "Eleven bairns ha' I borne," [Margaret Henan] said; "sux o' them lossies [lassies] an' five o' them loddies [laddies]." The pictures hereabout are of Dr. Goodword's wee grandbairns, Laurel and Abigail, who live in Colorado.

Word History: It always gives me great pleasure to discuss a word that was not borrowed from any language. Today's Good Word is pure English, inherited from its Germanic ancestors. The word in Old Germanic was *barno- from the verb beran "to bear", which remains in all English dialects. Bairn is the Scottish form, but Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish retain it as barn. German and Dutch switched to kind and English, to child, which goes back to a *kil-d-. The root *kil- was an old Germanic word meaning "womb" while kind is related to English kin, to "generate", and to the gyne in gynecology. (An old Agora activist, Ekkis, raised the issue of naming our issue across Germanic languages.)

[Perry]

If a baby is really well swaddled, would that be locking the bairn door?

[sluggo]

If you have a male child and he misbehaves, does that give you a bad son-bairn?

[Stargzer]

If you have a male child and he misbehaves, does that give you a bad son-bairn?

Only if he misbehaves during hot, sunny, summer afternoons while not wearing any sunblock. especially while at the beach or on the water.