firn
/fɪɹn/noun
firn is a noun meaning “A type of old snow which has gone through multiple thaw and refreeze cycles and thus is made of numerous small icy grains, though it is not nearly as…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-I-R-N, and it appears about once in every 28 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of firn is firns.
What does firn mean?
noun
- 1
A type of old snow which has gone through multiple thaw and refreeze cycles and thus is made of numerous small icy grains, though it is not nearly as saturated with water as snowcone slush is; can be hard or somewhat soft depending on recent and current weather conditions.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce firn?
- UK /fɪə(ɹ)n/
- US /fɪɹn/
- US /fɪəɹn/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Flame,_not_lame-firn.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of firn
- firns plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is firn?
Firn appears about once in every 28 million words in written English, the 161,690th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Firn in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense A type of old snow which has gone through multiple thaw and refreeze cycles:
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does firn come from?
Borrowed from German Firn, from Alemannic German firn (“last year's”), from Old High German firni (“old”), from Proto-West Germanic [Term?], from Proto-Germanic *firnijaz, *fernaz (“foregoing, previous”), from Proto-Indo-European *per- (“forth, forward, across, through”); cognate with Old English fyrn (“former”), Old Norse forn (“old”), and Gothic 𐍆𐌰𐌹𐍂𐌽𐌴𐌹𐍃 (fairneis, “old”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).