What it means
خرمن (kharman) refers to the pile of harvested and threshed grain gathered on the threshing floor, ready for winnowing or storage. The word comes from Old and Middle Persian and is the root of خرمنگاه (kharmangâh, threshing floor) and خرمنکوب (kharmankub, threshing implement). In everyday modern Persian the word is mostly encountered in literature, proverbs, and descriptions of traditional farming. Its closest functional equivalent in agricultural prose is انبار غله (anbâr-e ghalle, grain store), but خرمن specifically describes the outdoor heap before the grain is moved indoors.
How to use it
- خرمن گندم آمادهی باد دادن بود. (Kharman-e gandom âmâde-ye bâd dâdan bud.) “The wheat pile was ready for winnowing.”
- آتش به خرمن افتاد. (Âtash be kharman oftâd.) “Fire fell on the harvest pile.”
- سال خوبی بود، خرمن بزرگی داشتیم. (Sâl-e khubi bud, kharman-e bozorgi dâshtim.) “It was a good year, we had a big harvest pile.”
- شعر قدیمی از خرمن پر حرف میزنه. (She’r-e qadimi az kharman-e por harf mi-zane.) “Old poetry speaks of a full harvest heap.”
Cultural note
In classical Persian poetry, خرمن is a recurring image of wealth and providence. Hafez and Saadi both use it to evoke the generosity of nature or divine grace, and the phrase خرمن امید (kharman-e omid, harvest of hope) appears across centuries of verse. The destruction of a خرمن by fire or wind, a genuine agricultural catastrophe in pre-modern Iran, became a metaphor for sudden ruin. The curse آتش به خرمنت بزنند (may fire fall on your harvest) survives as one of the sharpest expressions in Persian, measuring how central the harvest pile was to a family’s survival.