churn
Definitions
General English
- verb to turn cream to make butter
- verb to buy and sell shares on someone’s behalf, in order to earn commission for yourself
Agriculture
- noun a large metal milk container
- verb to shake a liquid violently to mix it
Commerce
- verb to be in a situation where many employees stay for only a short time and then leave and have to be replaced
- verb to buy many different products or services one after the other without showing loyalty to any of them
Food
- A tall almost cylindrical metal vessel with a deep rimmed lid used in the olden days to keep milk for sale or further processing
- A vessel of moderate size, often made of wood in which cream was converted to butter by agitation, now superseded by machinery
Marketing
- verb to persuade an investor to change the shares in his or her portfolio frequently because the broker is paid every time the investor buys a new share
Media Studies
- noun the rate of turnover of a company’s customers
Origin & History of “churn”
It has been speculated that the term churn is based on the granular appearance cream takes on as it is stirred or agitated. The Old English noun cyrin comes from a prehistoric Germanic *kernjōn, which may be related to English corn and kernel and Latin grānum ‘grain’. The derived verb churn is a comparatively late creation, not appearing until the 15th century.
