Ken vs Kern - What's the difference?
ken | kern |
Knowledge or perception.
Range of sight.
To know, perceive or understand.
To discover by sight; to catch sight of; to descry.
* 1662 Thomas Salusbury, Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (Dialogue 2):
* Addison
* Shakespeare
(slang, UK, obsolete) A house, especially a den of thieves.
English irregular verbs
----
(obsolete, or, dialect) A corn; grain; kernel.
any part of a letter which extends into the space used by another letter.
* 1856 , , Odd Fellows' Literary Casket , Volumes 6-7,
To adjust the horizontal space between selected pairs of letters (characters or glyphs); to perform such adjustments to a portion of text, according to preset rules.
* 2001 , Constance J. Sidles, Graphic Designer's Digital Printing and PrePress Handbook ,
* 2001 , Bill Camarda, Special Edition Using Microsoft Word 2002 ,
* 2006 , Tova Rabinowitz, Exploring Typography ,
* 2008 , Terry Rydberg, Exploring Adobe InDesign CS4 ,
A light-armed foot soldier of the ancient militia of Ireland and Scotland; in archaic contexts often used as a term of contempt .
* , Act 3, Scene 7,
* 1908 , ,
(obsolete) A boor; a low person.
(obsolete, UK, legal) An idler; a vagabond.
----
As a symbol ken
is the iso 3166-1 three-letter (alpha-3) code for kenya.As a noun kern is
kernel.ken
English
Etymology 1
Northern and Scottish dialects from (etyl) . The noun meaning “range of sight” is a nautical abbreviation of present participle kenning.Noun
(-)Usage notes
In common usage a (fossil word), found only in the phrase .Coordinate terms
* (nautical range of sight) (l)Quotations
* (English Citations of "ken")Verb
- I proposed to the Mariners, that it would be of great benefit in Navigation to make use of [the telescope] upon the round-top of a ship, to discover and kenne Vessels afar off.
- We ken them from afar.''
- 'Tis he. I ken the manner of his gait.
Quotations
* (English Citations of "ken")Derived terms
* beken * foreken * kenned * kenning * misken * underken * unkennedReferences
* * * * *Etymology 2
Perhaps from kennel.Noun
(en noun)kern
English
Etymology 1
A variant of corn, see (etyl) kern, (etyl) kerno, cherno, (etyl) kerne, kern, (etyl) ; see also kernel.Noun
Etymology 2
(kerning) From (etyl)"kern" at Etymonlineor from Etymology 1. The verb is a back-formation from (kerned), which is from the noun.
Alternative forms
* kerneNoun
(en noun)page 360,
- A few types have a portion of the face letter projecting over the body, as in the letter f ; this projection is called the kern', and in combination with other letters the projecting part generally extends over the next letter, as in fe. In those combinations, wherein the ' kern would come in contact with another letter, compound types are cast, as in the case of ff, fi, fl, ffi, ffl.
Verb
(en verb)page 51,
- If you need to kern anything beyond the most commonly used pairs, you can use applications software such as Adobe PageMaker to customize pairs.
page 122,
- Especially consider kerning if you are printing on a relatively high-resolution printer, such as a 600-dpi (dots per inch) laser printer.
page 320,
- Remember, the goal of kerning is to make letter pairs look natural, not necessarily to minimize letterspaces.
page 98,
- You should kern letter pairs when spacing between characters is too wide or too narrow.
Derived terms
* kern pairEtymology 3
From (etyl) ceithern.Alternative forms
* kerneNoun
(en noun)- O then belike she was old and gentle; and you rode like a kern of Ireland, your French hose off and in your strait strossers.
- There he entertained Shan O'Neil, a famous, turbulent chief from Ireland, who late in this year visited Elizabeth's Court, where his train of kerns and gallowglasses, clothed in linen kilts dyed with saffron, made a great impression.
- (Blount)
- (Wharton)