noun
bairn
beh-uhrn
noun
1
A child, especially in Scottish and northern English usage.
"She was carrying her youngest bairn on her hip."
How to Use Bairn
Learner’s notesIn plain EnglishA Scots and northern-English word for a child or baby.
When to use it
Regional and informal — common in Scotland and North East England, rare elsewhere.
Word Forms
bairned past tense, bairns plural, bairns singular
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Etymology
From Scots bairn, from Old English bearn ("child"), a doublet of barn (the storage building, from an unrelated sense of "storing grain").