March 16, 2010
- garner (verb)
- \GAHR-ner\
- What does it mean?
- 1 : to gather in and store2 a : to acquire by effort : earn b : to gather up or pile up, especially little by little : amass, collect
- How do you use it?
- Natalie felt she could have played better, but her performance on the cello was good enough to garner praise from several music critics.
- Are you a word wiz?
The word "garner" is related to the name of a crop that's raised for food. Which one of these do you think that is?
Harvest well-deserved praise if you picked B. The verb "garner" dates back to the 1300s, and it comes from a noun "garner" that entered English 200 years earlier, in the 1100s. The noun refers to a storehouse or a bin that holds threshed grain, and it derives from "granum," the Latin word for "grain." "Granum" bore fruit in the form of other words as well. Other English words derived from "granum" include the name of the hard rock known as "granite" and "filigree," the ornamental work that made of fine wire.
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