Earn vs urn

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Grammarist

Earn means to obtain wages or payment in return for work. Earn also means to gain money through a return on investment, such as interest, dividends or other profits. Earn may also mean to receive a return for one’s achievements or other actions or merits. Related words are earns, earned and earning, noun forms are earner and earnings. Earn comes from the Old English word earnian, meaning deserve, earn, merit, labor for, win, get a reward for labor.

An urn is a tall vase with one large rounded foot. An urn may be used as an objet d’art, a receptacle for flowers, a resting place for the cremated remains of the dead, or a container for liquids such as coffee or tea. Coffee and tea urns are generally metal and include a tap for draining the liquid. Urn comes from the Latin word urna, meaning a jar, vessel of baked clay, water-jar, vessel for the ashes of the dead.

Examples

East Timor wants it to be set at a median line between them, so more of the petroleum fields would lie in its waters, so it would earn more revenue.  (The Jakarta Post)

Greenwood Community High School’s Marching Woodmen and Irish Guard earned first place in Class B at Ben Davis High School. (The Daily Journal)

She notes that men earn more in part because they “are significantly more likely than women to work longer hours,” according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. (The Wall Street Journal)

The boys soon realized it was likely an urn that once held someone’s ashes. (The Contra Costa Times)

A pair of Australian men used pine cones to rescue a duck that somehow got itself trapped inside a Tuscan urn with a small opening. (UPI)