Definition of "burn"

burn¹

/bɝn/

noun
countable and uncountable, plural burns
1. A physical injury caused by heat, cold, electricity, radiation or caustic chemicals.
2. A sensation resembling such an injury.
3. The act of burning something with fire.
  Quotations
  One typical Grecian kiln engorged one thousand muleloads of juniper wood in a single burn.
  2006, Edwin Black, chapter 2, in Internal Combustion‎
4. (slang) An intense non-physical sting, as left by shame or an effective insult.
5. (slang) An effective insult, often in the expression sick burn (excellent or badass insult).
6. Physical sensation in the muscles following strenuous exercise, caused by build-up of lactic acid.
7. (uncountable, UK, chiefly prison slang) Tobacco.
  Quotations
  TOM: I’m serious bruv. Put my burn and lighter and all that in my jeans please and give them here, then press the cell bell.
  2002, Tom Wickham, “A Day In The Wrong Life”, in Julian Broadhead, Laura Kerr, editors, Prison Writing‎, 16th edition, Waterside Press, page 26
  “Any of you want to borrow some burn,” asked a scarred inmate known as Bull.
  2006, S. Drake, A Cry for Help‎, Chipmunkapublishing ltd, Chapter 7, page 94
  It was like no one was looking out for me, and the older kids used to take the piss ...they were always threatening me and taking my burn [tobacco] […]
  2006, Peter Squires, editor, Community Safety: Critical Perspectives on Policy and Practice‎, Policy Press, page 23
  As the prison week ended and the less careful inmates began to run out of burn they went through a peculiar begging ritual that I, never one to husband resources either, was quick to learn.
  2010, Stephen Fry, The Fry Chronicles
8. (computing) The writing of data to a permanent storage medium like a compact disc or a ROM chip.
  Quotations
  Allow additional burns enables you to create a multisession CD, which can be used again to write more data.
  2003, Maria Langer, Mac OS X 10.2 Advanced, page 248
9. The operation or result of burning or baking, as in brickmaking.
10. (uncountable) A disease in vegetables; brand.
11. (aerospace) The firing of a spacecraft's rockets in order to change its course.
  Quotations
  On 4 March 1999, the MCO performed its second course correction manoeuvre with a burn involving its four thrusters […]
  2004, David Baker, Jane's Space Directory, page 529
12. A kind of watercourse.
verb
third-person singular simple present burns, present participle burning, simple past and past participle burned or (mostly Commonwealth) burnt or (obsolete) brent
1. (transitive) To cause to be consumed by fire.
  Quotations
  Since the mid-1980s, when Indonesia first began to clear its bountiful forests on an industrial scale in favour of lucrative palm-oil plantations, “haze” has become an almost annual occurrence in South-East Asia. The cheapest way to clear logged woodland is to burn it, producing an acrid cloud of foul white smoke that, carried by the wind, can cover hundreds, or even thousands, of square miles.
  2013 June 29, “Unspontaneous combustion”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8842, page 29
2. (intransitive) To be consumed by fire, or in flames.
  Quotations
  Plastics are energy-rich substances, which is why many of them burn so readily. Any organism that could unlock and use that energy would do well in the Anthropocene. Terrestrial bacteria and fungi which can manage this trick are already familiar to experts in the field.
  2013 July 20, “Welcome to the plastisphere”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8845
3. (transitive) To overheat so as to make unusable.
4. (intransitive) To become overheated to the point of being unusable.
5. (transitive) To make or produce by the application of fire or burning heat.
  Quotations
  I posted myself near a place where they had been burning charcoal, and very soon the hare came running past, close to where I was standing.
  1886, Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, Folk and Fairy Tales, page 78
6. (transitive) To injure (a person or animal) with heat or chemicals that produce similar damage.
7. (transitive, surgery) To cauterize.
8. (transitive, intransitive) To sunburn.
9. (transitive) To consume, damage, or change the condition of, as if by action of fire or heat; to affect as fire or heat does.
  Quotations
  This tyrant fever burns me up.
  c. 1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King Iohn”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act V, scene iii]
  This dry sorrow burns up all my tears.
  1681, John Dryden, The Spanish Fryar: Or, the Double Discovery. […], London: […] Richard Tonson and Jacob Tonson, […], (please specify the page number)
  You are jealous and covet [what others have] and your desires go unfulfilled; [so] you become murderers. [To hate is to murder as far as your hearts are concerned.] You burn with envy and anger and are not able to obtain [the gratification, the contentment, and the happiness that you seek], so you fight and war. You do not have, because you do not ask.
  1965, Amplified Bible, James 4:2
10. (intransitive) To be hot, e.g. due to embarrassment.
  Quotations
  In ſlumbers oft for fere I quakeFor hete & cold I burne & ſhakeFor lake of ſlepe my hede dothe akeWhat menys thys
  a. 1542, Thomas Wyatt, “What menythe thys” in the Devonshire Manuscript, folio 12 verso
11. (chemistry, transitive) To cause to combine with oxygen or other active agent, with evolution of heat; to consume; to oxidize.
12. (chemistry, dated) To combine energetically, with evolution of heat.
13. (transitive, computing) To write data to a permanent storage medium like a compact disc or a ROM chip.
  Quotations
  At first they didn’t do anything by design, beyond writing songs and gigging around Sheffield, distributing homemade demo CDs at shows. Their canny friends burned copies to leave on buses, but more importantly, uploaded them to filesharing sites and set up a MySpace page.
  2015 October 22, Laura Snapes, “How Arctic Monkeys’ debut single changed the music industry and ‘killed the NME’”, in The Guardian‎
14. (transitive, computing, by extension) To render subtitles into a video's content while transcoding it, making the subtitles part of the image.
15. (transitive, slang) To betray.
16. (transitive, slang) To insult or defeat.
17. (transitive) To waste (time); to waste money or other resources.
18. In certain games, to approach near to a concealed object which is sought.
  Quotations
  Not being accustomed to make fine distinctions, or to appreciate magnanimity, they read his letters and speeches as if they read them not. They were not aware when they approached a heroic statement,—they did not know when they burned.
  1860, Henry David Thoreau, The Last Days of John Brown‎
19. (intransitive, curling) To accidentally touch a moving stone.
20. (transitive, card games) In pontoon, to swap a pair of cards for another pair, or to deal a dead card.
21. (photography) To increase the exposure for certain areas of a print in order to make them lighter (compare dodge).
22. (intransitive, physics, of an element) To be converted to another element in a nuclear fusion reaction, especially in a star.
23. (intransitive, slang, card games, gambling) To discard.
24. (transitive, slang) To shoot someone with a firearm.
25. (transitive, espionage) To compromise (an agent's cover story).
  Quotations
  He had already burned his cover with Mrs. Phillips, and it was not a mistake he intended to make again.
  2011, Thomas H. Cook, Night Secrets
  Eventually they'd report back to Ryker, and he still didn't know if Ryker had personally burned his cover and sent assassins after him, or if the SSU had a mole. Until he knew for certain, he had to play this safe.
  2013, Vanessa Kier, Vengeance: The SSU Book 1
26. (transitive, espionage) To blackmail.
  Quotations
  "How does Leipzig burn him precisely?" Enderby insisted. "What's the pressure? Dirty pix—well, okay. Karla's a puritan, so's Kirov. But I mean, Christ, this isn't the fifties, is it? […]
  1979, John le Carré, Smiley's People

burn²

/bɝn/

noun
plural burns
1. (Northern England, Scotland) A stream.
  Quotations
  This darksome burn, horseback brown, / His rollrock highroad roaring down, / In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam / Flutes and low to the lake falls home.
  1881, Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Inversnaid”, in Robert Bridges, editor, Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins: Now First Published […], London: Humphrey Milford, published 1918, stanza 1, page 53
  He may pitch on some tuft of lilacs over a burn, and smoke innumerable pipes to the tune of the water on the stones.
  1881, Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque
  At this place, the clay in the 52 ft. embankment had been under water pressure for some weeks before the water level could be lowered, and the burn diverted through a temporary culvert.
  1950 October, “Completion of Flood-Damage Repairs, East Coast Main Line”, in Railway Magazine, pages 708-709
  When it was too heavy rain the burn ran very high and wide and ye could never jump it.
  2008, James Kelman, Kieron Smith, Boy, Penguin, published 2009, page 105

Definition of "burn"

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burn¹

burn²