Definition of "wern"

wern¹

verb
third-person singular simple present werns, present participle werning, simple past and past participle werned
1. (obsolete, transitive) To refuse.
  Quotations
  He is too great a niggard that will wern/ A man to light a candle at his lantern.(please add an English translation of this quotation)
  1387–1400, Geoffrey Chaucer, “(please specify the story)”, in The Canterbury Tales; republished in [William Thynne], editor, The Workes of Geffray Chaucer Newlye Printed, […], [London]: […] [Richard Grafton for] Iohn Reynes […], 1542,

wern²

verb
1. (obsolete) plural simple past of be
  Quotations
  And thanne he seide to other folkes that thei shulde seye somme goode thinges for to recomforte the lordes and the people, which werne in grete trouble as for the deth of the moste noble kinge that ever was.
  c. 1450, The Dicts and Sayings of the Philosophers
  And she rehearsed what she had said, and said if tho words made it not sure she said boldly that she would make it surer ere than she went thence; for she said she thought in her conscience she was bound, whatsoever the words wern.
  1469, Margaret Paston, The Paston Letters
  Her name was Agape whoſe children werneAll three as one, the firſt hight Priamond,The ſecond Dyamond, the youngeſt Triamond.
  1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IIII, Canto II”, in The Faerie Queene. […], part II (books IV–VI), London: […] [Richard Field] for William Ponsonby, page 32
  Through the falseness of that lither ladThese three lives wern all gone.
  1910, “Glasgerion”, in Arthur Quiller-Couch, editor, The Oxford Book of English Verse