LEARN • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Learn

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/lərn/ Listen

verb

Learn v. t. (past & past part. learned or learnt; pres. part. learning)

To gain knowledge or information of; to ascertain by inquiry, study, or investigation; to receive instruction concerning; to fix in the mind; to acquire understanding of, or skill; as, to learn the way; to learn a lesson; to learn dancing; to learn to skate; to learn the violin; to learn the truth about something. "Learn to do well." "Now learn a parable of the fig tree."

To communicate knowledge to; to teach. (Obs.) "Hast thou not learned me how To make perfumes?" Note: Learn formerly had also the sense of teach, in accordance with the analogy of the French and other languages, and hence we find it with this sense in Shakespeare, Spenser, and other old writers. This usage has now passed away. To learn is to receive instruction, and to teach is to give instruction. He who is taught learns, not he who teaches.

Learn v. i. (past & past part. learned or learnt; pres. part. learning) To acquire knowledge or skill; to make progress in acquiring knowledge or skill; to receive information or instruction; as, this child learns quickly. "Take my yoke upon you and learn of me."

To learn by heart. See By heart, under Heart.

To learn by rote, to memorize by repetition without exercise of the understanding.

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Etymology of 'Learn'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Learn" Quotes from Famous Books

... and exclusive position which seems almost necessary to develop original thought and original national life, yet she may still act as the point of fusion for distinct schools and polities, and the young and buoyant vigour of the new-born nations may at once teach, and learn from, the prudence, the experience, the traditional wisdom of ...

— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley

... bad—it is the natural expression of the artist's superfluous energy and delight—but because we ourselves cannot be trusted with ornament, as a drunkard cannot be trusted with strong drink. We must learn to see things plain before we can see them at all, or enjoy them for their own real qualities and not for what we think we see in them. A man whose taste is for bad poetry can only improve it by reading good, plain prose. He must become rational ...

— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock

... paradise when I look back to it, with its broad clean streets and open squares, and the low houses with balconies, and yet there I often thought myself miserable, for I began to learn what it was to be a soldier's wife. Madame de Rambouillet had kindly written to some of her friends in the duchy of Lorraine respecting me, and they assisted us in obtaining a lodging and servants. This might otherwise have been difficult, for the Duke was I the Spanish ...

— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... league of mightiest nations in those hours When Venice was an envy, might abate, But did not quench her spirit; in her fate All were enwrapped: the feasted monarchs knew And loved their hostess, nor could learn to hate, Although they humbled. With the kingly few The many felt, for from all days and climes She was the voyager's worship; even her crimes Were of the softer order—born of Love. She drank no blood, nor fattened on the dead, But gladdened where her harmless conquests spread; For these ...

— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... sufficient foundation in truth, that the venereal disorder was not introduced here from Europe by our ships in 1773. It assuredly was now found to exist amongst them, for we had not been long there, before some of our people received the infection; and I had the mortification to learn from thence, that all the care I took when I first visited these islands to prevent this dreadful disease from being communicated to their inhabitants, had proved ineffectual. What is extraordinary, they do not seem to regard it much; and as we saw few signs of its destroying effects, probably ...

— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

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