earn

present singular third person earns · participle present earning · participle past earned · past earned · UK participle past earnt · UK past earnt · first person past singular earned · first person past singular earnt · archaic present second person singular earnest · past second person singular earned · past second person singular earnt · archaic past second person singular earnedst · present singular third person earns · archaic present singular third person earneth · past singular third person earned · past singular third person earnt

1. transitiveTo 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.

   3 more examples

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

   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.

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

   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.

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

   Synonyms: deserve, merit, garner, win

2. transitiveTo 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.

   2 more examples

   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.

   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.

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

3. intransitiveTo receive payment for work.

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

   Synonyms: get, take in, rake in, rake it in

4. transitiveTo cause (someone) to receive payment or reward.

   My CD earns me six percent!

   2 more examples

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

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

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

   Synonyms: yield, make, generate, render

5. transitiveTo achieve by being worthy of.

   to earn a spot in the top 20

present singular third person earns · participle present earning · participle past earned · past earned

1. UKarchaicdialectaltransitiveTo curdle (milk), especially in the cheesemaking process.

   Synonyms: run, yearn

2. UKdialectalintransitiveobsoleteOf milk: to curdle, especially in the cheesemaking process.

present singular third person earns · participle present earning · participle past earned · past earned

1. UKdialectalobsoletetransitiveTo strongly long or yearn (for something or to do something).

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

   1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 3

2. UKdialectalintransitiveobsoleteTo grieve.

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

   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

plural earns

1. UKalternativedialectalAlternative form of erne

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

   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

1. abbreviationinitialismInitialism of European Academic and Research Network: a former computer network connecting universities and research institutions across Europe.

1. A river in Perth and Kinross council area, Scotland, which flows into the tidal River Tay.