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BARREN
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
An uninhabited wilderness that is worthless for cultivation
Example:
the trackless wastes of the desert
Synonyms:
Classified under:
Nouns denoting spatial position
Hypernyms ("barren" is a kind of...):
wild; wilderness (a wild and uninhabited area left in its natural condition)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "barren"):
heath; heathland (a tract of level wasteland; uncultivated land with sandy soil and scrubby vegetation)
Derivation:
barren (providing no shelter or sustenance)
II. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Completely wanting or lacking
Example:
the sentence was devoid of meaning
Synonyms:
barren; destitute; devoid; free; innocent
Classified under:
Similar:
nonexistent (not having existence or being or actuality)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Not bearing offspring
Example:
learned early in his marriage that he was sterile
Classified under:
Similar:
infertile; sterile; unfertile (incapable of reproducing)
Derivation:
barrenness (the state (usually of a woman) of having no children or being unable to have children)
Sense 3
Meaning:
Providing no shelter or sustenance
Example:
a stark landscape
Synonyms:
bare; barren; bleak; desolate; stark
Classified under:
Adjectives
Similar:
inhospitable (unfavorable to life or growth)
Derivation:
barren (an uninhabited wilderness that is worthless for cultivation)
barrenness (the quality of yielding nothing of value)
Context examples:
Finding that Holmes was too absorbed for conversation I had tossed aside the barren paper, and leaning back in my chair I fell into a brown study.
(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Our men therefore wandered on the shore to find out some fresh water near the sea, and I walked alone about a mile on the other side, where I observed the country all barren and rocky.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
We now know that these areas, once thought to be barren and stable, are actually quite dynamic, said Ricardo Letelier, an Oregon State University biogeochemist and ecologist who, in collaboration with scientist David Karl at the University of Hawaii, led the study.
(North Pacific Ocean fertilized by iron in Asian dust, National Science Foundation)
I desired that I might pass my life on that barren rock, wearily, it is true, but uninterrupted by any sudden shock of misery.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
I now closed Morton school, taking care that the parting should not be barren on my side.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
When he passed Penerley, where were three cottages and a barn, he reached the edge of the tree country, and found the great barren heath of Blackdown stretching in front of him, all pink with heather and bronzed with the fading ferns.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
He took my hands and raised me up, and made me sit on the sofa, and sat by me; he held my hand in his, and said to me with, oh, such infinite sweetness:—My life is a barren and lonely one, and so full of work that I have not had much time for friendships; but since I have been summoned to here by my friend John Seward I have known so many good people and seen such nobility that I feel more than ever—and it has grown with my advancing years—the loneliness of my life.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
It's unclear, say D'Odorico and Okin, whether the Kalahari's dunes hang on the edge of a tipping point between their current state—vegetated fixed linear dunes—or have moved to what researchers call a degraded state, barren and active dunes.
(Sleeping sands of the Kalahari awaken after more than 10,000 years, NSF)
The soil was barren, scarcely affording pasture for a few miserable cows, and oatmeal for its inhabitants, which consisted of five persons, whose gaunt and scraggy limbs gave tokens of their miserable fare.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
She was very showy, but she was not genuine: she had a fine person, many brilliant attainments; but her mind was poor, her heart barren by nature: nothing bloomed spontaneously on that soil; no unforced natural fruit delighted by its freshness.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
