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barn

noun · verb

Simple meaning

A building, often found on a farm, used for storage or keeping animals such as cattle.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

bahrn
US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈbɑɹn

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

  1. agriculture

    A building, often found on a farm, used for storage or keeping animals such as cattle.

  2. An outlying farm building for storing grain or animal feed and housing farm animals

  3. nuclear physics

    A unit of surface area equal to 10⁻²⁸ square metres.

  4. informalbasketballice hockey

    An arena.

  5. A diminutive of the male given names Barney, Barnabas, Barnaby, or Barnett.

verb

  1. transitive

    To lay up in a barn.

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: (agriculture) A building, often found on a farm, used for storage or keeping animals such as cattle.

Used this way, barn is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
Matter-of-fact
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

More ways to use barn

  • “The farmer keeps his hay and tools stored inside the large red barn.”

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.