A child, especially in Scottish and Northern English dialects; a young boy or girl.
From Old English 'bearn' and Old Norse 'barn,' both meaning 'child.' The word survived in regional British speech while most English varieties shifted to 'child,' though it's preserved in Scandinavian languages too.
The word 'bairn' is a linguistic time capsule—it's survived in Scottish speech for over 1,200 years and appears in the exact same form in modern Norwegian and Swedish, showing how isolation helped Scottish preserve ancient words.
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