Pronunciations (4)
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/tɑːn/
Pronunciation notes
- Received-Pronunciation
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/tɑɹn/
Pronunciation notes
- General-American
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tɑːn
Pronunciation notes
- GB
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tɑɹn
Pronunciation notes
- US
Noun
A small mountain lake, especially in Northern England.
Usage- Northern-England
- Examples
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More examples (3)
Thou Wind, that ravest without, / Bare craig, or mountain-tairn, or blasted tree, / Or pine-grove whither woodman never clomb, / Or lonely house, long held the witches' home, / Methinks were fitter instruments for thee, / Mad Lutanist! [footnote: Tairn is a small lake, generally if not always applied to the lakes up in the mountains, and which are the feeders of those in the valleys.[…]]
It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene [of the House of Usher], of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down—but with a shudder even more thrilling than before—upon the re-modelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.
Tarns are found in some of the vales, and are numerous upon the mountains. A Tarn, in a Vale, implies, for the most part, that the bed of the vale is not happily formed; that the water of the brooks can neither wholly escape, nor diffuse itself over a large area. Accordingly, in such situtions, Tarns are often surrounded by an unsightly tract of boggy ground; but this is not always the case, […]
There Grendel was watching his blood flow out into the seething tarn.
More examples (1)
In another story the remarkable mystery of the umbrella lost at the shores of a tarn and retrieved at the seaside is explained by the underground communication between the two.
One of many small mountain lakes or ponds.
Usage- US usage
- Examples
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More examples (3)
It [the caribou] makes a fine, bold study on the foreground of an evening scene among the mountain tarns of Northern Idaho, as it fulfils the ideal description of the stag given by [Walter] Scott and other writers.
Have you ever been swimming in glacial water – water turned milky blue or deep maroon by minerals and deposits seized by the glacier as it ponderously made its way across a continent? You would have been high atop a mountain, maybe in the Canadian Rockies or in Montana, where glaciers, now in retreat, still press down on the earth's crust. And it would have been in the summer – late August perhaps – the sun warm and still and bright, making you feel as if a dip in this remote glacial tarn is just what your tired body needs at this point in your day.
Off to either side of the road [Beartooth Highway], unforgettable mountain scenes arise beneath crisp mountain skies. Here is alpine country at its best, complete with lakes and tarns set amid truly rugged promontories.
Noun
a mountain lake (especially one formed by glaciers)
- Broader terms