Reinhold Niebuhr
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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."
Examples of garner in a Sentence
James Broughel,
Forbes.com,
4 July 2026
Whether the Red Sox entertain trade offers for Chapman, who would surely garner a haul even with his recent ineffectiveness, will be one of the biggest questions heading into the deadline.
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Jen McCaffrey,
New York Times,
4 July 2026
Historians are in broad agreement that this year’s celebration has garnered far less attention than the bicentennial, marked in 1976, which generated blanket media coverage and widespread national excitement.
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Los Angeles Times,
3 July 2026
Congress has repeatedly considered bills with stronger requirements, many of which have garnered bipartisan support.
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Max Grinstein,
The Washington Examiner,
3 July 2026
See All Example Sentences for garner
Cite this Entry
“Garner.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/garner. Accessed 5 Jul. 2026.
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Biographical Definition
Garner
biographical name
