Morn or mourn?
morn is a noun meaning “Morning”; mourn is a verb meaning “To express sadness or sorrow for; to grieve over (especially a death)”. Use morn as a noun and mourn as a verb (mourn is also a noun: “Sorrow, grief”). In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) mourn is about 2.4 times as common as morn.
What is the difference between morn and mourn?
| morn | mourn | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | noun | verb, noun |
| Meaning | Morning | To express sadness or sorrow for; to grieve over (especially a death) To engage in the social customs of mourning; to commemorate a death and/or honour the deceased socially Sorrow, grief |
| Example | none recorded | For two months, she mourned her father's passing |
| Forms | morns | mourns, mourning, mourned |
| Pronunciation | /mɔːn/ /moɹn/ [mo̞ɹn] | /mɔɹn/ /mɔːn/ /mo(ː)ɹn/ |
| In writing | 1.1 times per million words | 2.7 times per million words |
Sources: morn and mourn in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of morn and mourn
morn
- 1
Morning
mourn
- 1
To express sadness or sorrow for; to grieve over (especially a death)
For two months, she mourned her father's passing
- 2
Sorrow, grief
- 3
To engage in the social customs of mourning; to commemorate a death and/or honour the deceased socially
In that society, a spouse is mourned for one year, a parent for six months
- 4
A ring fitted upon the head of a lance to prevent wounding an adversary in tilting
- 5
To utter in a sorrowful manner
- 6
To wear mourning
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, morn or mourn?
morn appears 1.1 times per million words; mourn 2.7 times per million words.
morn 1.1 times per million wordsmourn 2.7 times per million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search morn vs mourn?
“morn vs mourn” is searched about 40 times a month on Google and 10 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“mourn vs morn”, “morn or mourn”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.