Meaning

verb earn on some commercial or business transaction; earn as salary or wages

verb acquire or deserve by one's efforts or actions

originProbably either: * from Middle English erne, ernen (“to coagulate, congeal”) (chiefly South Midlands) [and other forms], a metathetic variant of rennen (“to run; to coagulate, congeal”), from Old English rinnan (“to run”) (with the variants iernan, irnan) and Old Norse rinna (“to move quickly, run; of liquid: to flow, run; to melt”), both from Proto-Germanic *rinnaną, ultimately from…

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0