A merger of two Old English verbs — 'beornan' (be on fire) and 'baernan' (set fire to) — from PIE *gwher- (hot).
To be on fire; to destroy, damage, or injure with fire or heat; to feel intense heat or sensation.
From a merger of two Old English verbs: 'beornan' (intransitive, 'to be on fire') and 'bærnan' (transitive, 'to cause to burn, to set fire to'). Both descend from Proto-Germanic roots — *brinnaną (to burn, intransitive) and *brannijaną (to cause to burn, transitive) — from PIE *gʷʰr̥-nu- related to *gʷʰer- (hot, warm). The same PIE root produced 'warm,' 'brand,' and, through a separate branch, 'furnace' and 'fornication' (which originally referred to the heated
Old English had two separate verbs for burning — 'beornan' (the fire burns) and 'bærnan' (I burn the wood) — mirroring the distinction between intransitive and transitive. Modern English collapsed both into the single verb 'burn,' which is why we can say both 'the house burned' and 'they burned the house' with the same word.
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