barren
Part of speech: adj
noun
Morphological type: simple
Etymology: From Middle English bareyne, from Anglo-Norman baraigne, baraing (“sterile; barren”), of obscure origin; probably from a Germanic language, perhaps Frankish *baʀ (“bare; barren”), from Proto-Germanic *bazaz (“bare”). If so, a doublet of bare.
Inflected forms:
form: barrener
pos: adj
tags: comparative
form: more barren
pos: adj
tags: comparative
form: barrenest
pos: adj
tags: superlative
form: most barren
pos: adj
tags: superlative
form: barrens
pos: noun
tags: plural
Senses:
gloss: Not bearing children, childless; hence also unable to bear children, sterile.
pos: adj
tags: not-comparable
examples: I silently wept as my daughter's husband rejected her. What would she do now that she was no longer a maiden but also barren?
Forget not, in your speed, Antonius,
To touch Calpurnia; for our elders say,
The barren, touched in this holy chase,
Shake off their sterile curse.
The druids […] believed that mistletoe could make barren animals fecund, and that it was an antidote to all poisons.
gloss: Not bearing seed or fruit.
pos: adj
tags: not-comparable
gloss: Of poor fertility, infertile; not producing vegetation; desert, waste.
pos: adj
examples: barren mountain tracts
We have descended Tian Shan and entered the Taklamakan Desert, a barren landscape painted in ecru—no shrubs, no grass, only waves upon waves of naked ridges the color of buff, the highest few spotted with white specks of snow.
Terraforming even a barren planet often involves significant financial and ethical hurdles.
gloss: Devoid, lacking.
pos: adj
tags: with-of
examples: August 28, 1731, Jonathan Swift, letter to John Gay
But schemes are perfectly accidental. Some will appear barren of hints and matter, but prove to be fruitful.
gloss: Devoid of interest or attraction, poor, bleak.
pos: adj
examples: As they turned into Hertford Street they startled a robin from the poet's head on a barren fountain, and he fled away with a cameo note.
gloss: Unproductive, fruitless, unprofitable; empty, hollow, vain.
pos: adj
examples: brilliant but barren reveries
A third is wroth: ‘Is this an hour
⁠For private sorrow’s barren song,
⁠When more and more the people throng
The chairs and thrones of civil power?’
When the entire coast-line becomes a sea of waving palms, with Chinese and Malay villages fringing the shores, which are at present mere barren wastes of mangroves, with plantations of pepper, of gambier, and of tapioca and rice, the Northern Territory, backed up by the unswerving energy of the Australian squatter, miner, and planter, will present a spectacle almost unknown in the scheme of British colonization.
Rooney had been suffered a barren spell for England with only one goal in 15 games but he was in no mood to ignore the gifts on offer in front of an increasingly subdued Bulgarian support.
As the glut of new orders placed in the optimistic pre-pandemic years (worth billions of pounds) reaches its conclusion, production lines in Newton Aycliffe, Derby and Newport face a potentially barren future - as well as job losses that will be devastating for their communities and supply chains.
gloss: Mentally dull or unproductive; stupid or intellectually fallow.
pos: adj
examples: Set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too.
gloss: An area of low fertility and habitation, a desolate place.
pos: noun
examples: Sol squinted out over the barrens to where the mountains shimmered in the heat haze.
gloss: In particular, a usually elevated and flat expanse of land that only supports the growth of small trees and shrubs, and sometimes mosses or heathers, berries, and other marshy or moory vegetation, but little agriculture and few people.
pos: noun
tags: plural-normally
examples: The pine barrens are a site lonely enough to suit any hermit.
Snow Lies now four & five feet deep upon the Ground & the Air looks so Hazey that we think it Prudent to Return upon the Rocks & Barrens (for so they Call the Places where Wood does not Grow) we find that the wind had drifted the Snow Very thin Here we observe Some few Plants (1) Fir Moss, *Lycopodium Selago, (2) Rhein Deer Moss, Lichen Rangiferinus [Cladonia sp.], (3) A Kind of Horned Liverwort, Lichen, (4) a Plant that has very much the Appearance of Crow Berries, Empetrum [*Empetrum nigrum L.] of which I have only got the female which has 10 Stigmata.
Here it was now, by the side of a Swamp in the Barrens of Newfoundland, threadbare, wet, dirty.
What is known of it consists of a rocky and barren soil, steep hills covered with bad wood, some narrow and sandy valleys, extensive plains covered either with heath, or with rocky surfaces, more or less extensive, where not a tree or shrub is to be seen, and which are from thence usually called Barrens.
The 'barrens' of Newfoundland are those districts which occupy the summits of the hills and ridges, and other elevated and exposed tracts. They are covered with a thin and scrubby vegetation, consisting of berry-bearing plants and dwarf bushes of various species, and are somewhat similar in appearance to the moorlands of the north of England, differing only in the kind of vegetation.
In Newfound-land there are barrens of many miles in extent, high, and, comparatively speaking, dry plateaus; but the barrens in the provinces I am speaking of vary from a little open space of a few acres to a plain of five or six miles[…]
The 'barrens' are covered with a rich carpet of moss of every shade and colour, and abound in all sorts of wild berries, pleasing both to the eye and taste.
[...] the Arctic strip extends from the exposed coasts of the outer islands, in onto the mainland for from one to three or four miles as a practically unbroken "barren," sprinkled with lichen-covered ledges and carpeted with turf of reindeer lichen, sphagnum, Empetrum, sedges, creeping willows, and various other species of herbaceous plants, including the following, kindly determined for us by Dr. B. L. Robinson of the Gray herbarium[…]
No pan is more rugged and inhospitable than these 'barrens,' the vast rolling plateaux of the interior, broken by stunted groups of wind-tom trees Only at the plateaux' edges.
Habitat: Bogs, Heaths (known as 'Barrens' in Newfoundland) and rough meadows near boglands. Range In the eastern area: Manitoba eastward; including northern Minnesota to Newfoundland (A.B. Klots).
Synonyms: sterile
fruitless
Antonyms: fertile
fruitful
Derived words: barren-ground caribou
barrenly
barrenness
barren strawberry
barrenwort
nonbarren
overbarren
semibarren
unbarren
urchin barren
Translations: