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What do you call a building in which grain is stored? These days, English speakers are most likely to call it a granary, but there was a time when garner was also a good candidate. That noun made its way into the language in the 12th century (ultimately from Latin granum, "grain"); the verb garner followed three centuries later with a closely related meaning: "to gather into a granary." Today the verb has largely abandoned its agrarian roots—it usually means "to earn" or "to accumulate." Meanwhile the noun garner is rare in contemporary use. It's found mostly in older literary contexts, such as these lines from Sir Walter Scott's The Bride of Lammermoor: "Or, from the garner-door, on ether borne, / The chaff flies devious from the winnow'd corn."
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“Garner.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/garner. Accessed 12 Jul. 2026.
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