intern

¹ American  

[in-turn] / ˈɪn tɜrn /

Sometimes interne

noun

1. a resident member of the medical staff of a hospital, usually a recent medical school graduate serving under supervision.

2. Education. student teacher.

3. a person who works as an apprentice or trainee in an occupation or profession to gain practical experience, and sometimes also to satisfy legal or other requirements for being licensed or accepted professionally.

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verb (used without object)

interned, interning

1. to be or perform the duties of an intern.

intern ² American  

[in-turn, in-turn] / ɪnˈtɜrn, ˈɪn tɜrn /

verb (used with object)

1. to restrict to or confine within prescribed limits, as prisoners of war, enemy aliens, or combat troops who take refuge in a neutral country.

2. to impound or hold within a country until the termination of a war, as a ship of a belligerent that has put into a neutral port and remained beyond a limited period.

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noun

1. a person who is or has been interned; internee.

intern ³ American  

[in-turn] / ɪnˈtɜrn /

adjective

Archaic.

1. internal.

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intern British  

verb

1. (tr) to detain or confine (foreign or enemy citizens, ships, etc), esp during wartime

2. (intr) to serve or train as an intern

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noun

1. another word for internee

2. Also: interne. British equivalent: house officer. med a graduate in the first year of practical training after medical school, resident in a hospital and under supervision by senior doctors

3. a student teacher

4. a student or recent graduate receiving practical training in a working environment

adjective

1. an archaic word for internal

Etymology

Origin of intern¹

First recorded in 1825–30 intern ¹ for def. 1, and in 1920–25 intern ¹ for defs. 2, 3; from French interne “assistant doctor,” from Latin internus “inward”; intern ³

Origin of intern²

First recorded in 1865–70; from French interner “to send inland; confine,” verbal derivative of interne intern ³

Origin of intern³

First recorded in 1570–80; from Latin internus “inward,” equivalent to inter- inter- + -nus adjective suffix

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Explanation

Somewhere between being a student and a professional is the life of an intern, an advanced student, especially in medicine, who gets on-the-job experience. To intern or be an intern is to leave the classroom behind and start doing part of your profession — usually, the job of being a doctor. Sometimes an intern is paid, but not always, and the pay is never great. The experience is considered payment in itself. There have been many medical TV shows that feature interns, probably because the hours are long, the job is difficult, and there are many opportunities for drama in this boot camp for doctors. Medical interns may appreciate another meaning, which means to take away someone's freedom, as in "Why did you intern the prisoners?"

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

intern interned interning

Dillan Patel, for example, joined engineering software company Stride 18 months ago as an intern.

From BBC ● Nov. 4, 2026

The law student told me Mamdani had never gone far enough to earn his vote, but protesters with him that day included an ex-Mamdani intern.

From Slate ● Oct. 15, 2026

A graduate of Pepperdine University's law school, Zacharia began her career in Republican politics, working as an intern for the Republican National Committee in 2006, CNN reported.

From Barron's ● Oct. 9, 2026

“I can’t fathom how an intern should be making that much money.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 8, 2026

“I wanted to ask you to mentor me, you know, I’d work as an intern, do whatever, clean up, anything, because I have to make this sculpture.”

From "I'll Give You the Sun" by Jandy Nelson

While a student there, he interned at Massachusetts-based cloud computing company Akamai Technologies, German software company SAP, and Microsoft, according to his LinkedIn.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 17, 2026

Toward the end of his stint at Carnegie Mellon, he interned at Google Brain, the company’s pioneering AI deep-learning research team.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 4, 2026

Parra, who is 24, interned in Collins’ congressional office in 2024 and worked as a contractor for a Collins-affiliated political action committee until last year.

From Slate ● Aug. 27, 2026

Prior to that, he interned at Bloomberg News on the equities and European technology desks.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 7, 2026

Once I quit drinking and started making decent money at the little accounting firm I’d interned with, we bought the house on Overlook Road.

From "Please Ignore Vera Dietz" by A.S. King

“Being able to attend college and graduate debt-free opens up a lot of opportunities I wouldn’t have been able to have otherwise considered,” said Culpepper-Wehr, who will be interning at Goldman Sachs next summer.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 2, 2026

Brennan Drolet, a rising college senior studying finance, is spending this summer interning at a bank in Massachusetts.

From MarketWatch ● Jul. 9, 2026

He got his start interning at a local radio station, and in 2006 he became second mic to Wendy Williams in New Jersey, where he honed his hard-nosed interview style.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 18, 2026

Born in England and raised in Las Vegas, she will visit Los Angeles for the first time when she begins interning on the business desk today.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 26, 2026

The New York Times reports that they now prefer career-relevant activities like summer school or interning in an appropriate professional setting to the “sweaty, low-paid and mind-numbing slots that have long been their lot.”

From "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America" by Barbara Ehrenreich

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Related Words

• doctor
• resident
• student
• trainee

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