bawn

English

Pronunciation

IPA^(key): /bɔːn/
Rhymes: -ɔːn

Etymology 1

From Irish bábhún (“walled enclosure”).

Noun

bawn (plural bawns)

A cattle-fort; a building used to shelter cattle.
- 1596 (date written; published 1633), Edmund Spenser, A Vewe of the Present State of Irelande […], Dublin: […] Societie of Stationers, […], OCLC 606546850; republished as A View of the State of Ireland […] (Ancient Irish Histories), Dublin: […] Society of Stationers, […] Hibernia Press, […] [b]y John Morrison, 1809, OCLC 22906028:
  But these round hills and square bawnes, which you see so strongly trenched and throwne up
- 1729, Jonathan Swift, The Grand Question Debated, Thomas Sheridan (editor), John Nichols (editor, revised edition), 1812, The British Classics, Volume 45: The works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, D.D.: Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin, Volume XI, page 163:
  The Grand Question Debated
  Whether Hamilton's Bawn Should be Turned into a Barrack or a Malt-house − 1729
  This Hamilton's bawn, while it sticks in my hand, / I lose by the house what I get by the land; / But how to dispose of it to the best bidder, / For a barrack or malthouse, we now must consider.
- 1892, Joseph Jacobs (editor), Jack and His Master, Celtic Fairy Tales:
  When he was coming into the bawn at dinner-time, what work did he find Jack at but pulling armfuls of the thatch off the roof, and peeping into the holes he was making?
A defensive wall built around a tower house. It was once used to protect livestock during an attack.
- 2004, Colm J. Donnelly, Passage or Barrier? Communication between Bawn and Tower House in Late Medieval Ireland – the Evidence from County Limerick, in Château Gaillard 21: Études de castellologie médiévale: La Basse-cour: Actes du colloque international de Maynooth (Irlande), 23-30 août 2002, page 57:
  The cattle, therefore, would be brought into the bawn at night, as is stated by the early 17th-century writer Fynes Moryson who wrote that the Irish cattle “eat only by day, and then are brought at evening within the bawns of castles, where they stand or lie all night in a dirty yard without so much as a lock of hay.”

Verb

bawn

Pronunciation spelling of born.
- 1897, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], “[Pudd’nhead Wilson] Chapter II”, in The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson: And the Comedy Those Extraordinary Twins, Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing Company, OCLC 799455878, page 34:
  Bofe de same age, sir—five months. Bawn de fust o' Feb'uary.
- 1899, Charles W. Chesnutt, Sis’ Becky’s Pickaninny:
  But ef it has ter be prove' ter folks w'at wa'n't bawn en raise' in dis naberhood, dey is a' easy way ter prove it.
- 1900, [George] Bernard Shaw, “Captain Brassbound’s Conversion”, in Three Plays for Puritans: The Devil’s Disciple, Cæsar and Cleopatra, & Captain Brassbound’s Conversion, London: Grant Richards, […], published 1901, OCLC 122594195, Act I, page 223:
  Yah! You oughter bin bawn a Christian, you ought. You knaow too mach.

Anagrams

WNBA

Welsh

Pronunciation

IPA^(key): /bau̯n/
Rhymes: -au̯n

Verb

bawn

first-person singular imperfect subjunctive of bod

Synonyms

byddwn

Mutation

Welsh mutation
radical	soft	nasal	aspirate
bawn	fawn	mawn	unchanged
Note: Some of these forms may be hypothetical. Not every possible mutated form of every word actually occurs.