Rune

//ɹuːn// noun, verb

noun, verb ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A letter, or character, used in the written language of various ancient Germanic peoples, especially the Scandinavians and the Anglo-Saxons.

    "Yet they made for man those mystic swords of superhuman workmanship engraved with magic runes and dipped when red hot in blood or in a broth of poisonous herbs and twigs."

  2. 2
    any character from an ancient Germanic alphabet used in Scandinavia from the 3rd century to the Middle Ages wordnet
  3. 3
    Any visually similar script, such as Hungarian runes (the Old Hungarian script) or Turkic runes (the Old Turkic script).
  4. 4
    A Finnic or Scandinavian epic poem, or a division of one, especially a division of the Kalevala.
  5. 5
    A letter or mark used as a mystical or magic symbol.

    "And the sword that had visited Earth from so far away smote like the falling of thunderbolts [...] and the runes in Alveric’s far-travelled sword exulted, and roared at the elf-knight; until in the dark of the wood, amongst branches severed from disenchanted trees, with a blow like that of a thunderbolt riving an oak-tree, Alveric slew him."

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  1. 6
    A verse or song, especially one with mystical or mysterious overtones; a spell or an incantation.

    "Where the daylight peeps thro' like the glint of the Moon, / And the branches are rustling a murmurous rune, / The Owls sit in council like prophets of Fate, / Discussing grave questions of Kingdom and State."

  2. 7
    Alternative form of roun (“secret or mystery”). alt-of, alternative, obsolete
  3. 8
    A Unicode code point.

    "Go language defines the type rune as an alias for the type int32 to represent a Unicode code point. A string in Go is a sequence of runes."

Verb
  1. 1
    To compose or perform poetry or songs. dated, intransitive, poetic

Synonyms

All synonyms
alchemyarrowheadbewitcherycharactercharmconjuration

Example

More examples

"The runologist couldn't figure out what the final rune was meant to symbolize."

Etymology

Borrowed from Old Norse rún, which is from Proto-Germanic *rūnō (“letter, literature, secret”), which is borrowed either from Proto-Celtic *rūnā or from the same source as it; compare Dutch rune, German Rune, Raune, Danish rune and Swedish runa. Compare roun. ; Finnic epic poem ; "code point"

Related phrases

bind runebind-runemoon runerune bagrune bookrune clothrune poemrune spreadrune-risterrune-ristingtwig rune

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.