Born and Borne: What’s the Difference?

Deciding whether to use born or borne can be difficult, since both words are related to the verb bear and can have meanings connected to the idea of birth or creation. To tell them apart, let’s look closely at their definitions and some examples.

As the Merriam-Webster Unabridged entry for the verb form of bear describes, when bear is used in the sense of “to give birth to (offspring),” then “borne is the usual past participle form in active uses” (“Bear, v. [2a]”). The term active uses refers to the idea of a sentence using active voice—for an explanation about active and passive voice, see our post about verbs. You can see an example of this use below:

My friend’s dog has borne two litters of puppies.

In addition, borne is common in passive verb constructions “to suggest the action of giving birth especially as used with by” (“Bear, v. [2a]”), such as in the following:

All the puppies borne by my friend’s dog were healthy.

Borne doesn’t just have meanings related to birth or creation, though. The word can also mean “transport” (“Bear, v. [1o]”). So that is why you will see a word like waterborne, which means that something is carried or transmitted by water, or you can have a sentence like the following:

The travelers were borne by horse to their destination.

In contrast, born is used in passive verb constructions to signal “the fact of birth” (“Bear, v. [2a]”). So you can think of born as being used like an adjective in the following sentence to report on a fact:

Harry’s niece was born on a Tuesday.

Similarly, born can be used as an adjective to mean “native” (“Born, adj. [1b]”) or “deriving or resulting from” (“Born, adj. [1c]”).

The Scottish-born actor is starring in a new movie.

Sylvie’s idea for her novel was born from her experience traveling to Brazil.

And because born and borne are related to the verb bear, you may also be interested in our post about when to use bear instead of bare.

Works Cited

“Bear, v. (1o).” Merriam Webster Unabridged, 2025, unabridged.merriam-webster.com/unabridged/bear.

“Bear, v. (2a).” Merriam Webster Unabridged, 2025, unabridged.merriam-webster.com/unabridged/bear.

“Born, adj. (1b).” Merriam Webster Unabridged, 2025, unabridged.merriam-webster.com/collegiate/born.

“Born, adj. (1c).” Merriam Webster Unabridged, 2025, unabridged.merriam-webster.com/collegiate/born.