Have you ever been hiking and you come across a stacked pile of stones? Well those stones have a special name: cairn. We saw tons of them on our trip to California.
If you’re curious about words, visit Kathy at Bermuda Onion to join in the Wondrous Words Wednesday meme to learn more interesting vocab.
Cairn \ˈkern\ (sounds like care with an “n” at the end)
- noun; a pile of stones that marks a place (such as the place where someone is buried or a battle took place) or that shows the direction of a trail.
- From Middle English (Scots) carne, from Scottish Gaelic carn; akin to Old Irish & Welsh carn. I was really hoping for more interesting etymology. 🙁
We saw many cairns in Yosemite, and the younger members of our hiking crew liked to build their own.
Can you see the cairn my son built? The contrast in this photo isn’t great.
Word Nerd Workout
Can you share an archaeological term you learned this summer? How about something fun from vacation?
Thanks for getting nerdy with me today!
Cairn is a word I know I learned from reading – it kept coming up in a novel, and I looked it up.
I learned the word “weir” in Seattle, at the fish ladder. It is “a low wall or dam built across a stream or river to raise the level of the water or to change the direction of its flow” (that’s Merriam Webster’s definition). The salmon swim up each weir to move from one body of water to another.
I’ve never heard of a weir – thanks for sharing the definition!
Great post!
I thought cairn applied only to graves. Good to know it has other meanings. (At first I was shocked that you came across a bunch at Yosemite, but now I get it.)
That would be quite disturbing, wouldn’t it? Happy to clear that up for you. 😉
Although these really are cairns, as you say, here in Canada, we often refer to them as “inukshuks” (according to Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuksuk that should not have an “H” in it), although that is a relatively recent (past couple of decades) term.
Our Scottish heritage makes “cairn” a common word but I associate it with a bigger structure such as an historical marker. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_National_Historic_Sites_of_Canada_in_Alberta#/media/File:Frog_Lake_National_Historic_Site.JPG
Wow Debbie – thank you for taking the time to share some great info. I love the picture of the Frog Lake Historic Site – that is much bigger than anything I saw in Yosemite.
I knew this one because my sister’s name is Karen and I used to tease her, saying she was a pile of rocks. I love your son’s cairn.
Ha! That sounds like something my husband would do – he loves to tease. 😉
This is one that I actually know from hiking! Your son’s cairn is beautiful 🙂 The only word I can think of from this summer is CHANGES. We moved across the country and the weeks leading up to it were a bit chaotic 🙂
Wow! I bet things were chaotic. I hope you’re settling in now and happy!