barn

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

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

   One day I was out in the barn and he drifted in. I was currying the horse and he set down on the wheelbarrow and begun to ask questions.

2. 2
   noun

   An arena.

   Maple Leaf Gardens was a grand old barn.

3. 3
   verb

   To lay up in a barn.

   But like still-pining Tantalus he sits / And useless barns the harvest of his wits

4. 4
   noun

   an outlying farm building for storing grain or animal feed and housing farm animals

5. 5
   noun

   (physics) a unit of nuclear cross section

6. 6
   noun

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

7. 7
   noun

   A warm and cozy place, especially a bedroom; a roost.

8. 8
   noun

   A child.

Etymology

From Middle English barn, bern, bærn, from Old English bearn, bern, contracted forms of Old English berern, bereærn (“barn, granary”), compound of bere (“barley”) and ærn, ræn (“dwelling, barn”), from Proto-West Germanic *raʀn, from Proto-Germanic *razną (compare Old Norse rann), from pre-Germanic *h₁rh̥₁-s-nó-, from Proto-Indo-European *h₁erh₁- (“to rest”). More at rest and barley. For the use as a unit of surface area, see w:Barn (unit) § Etymology.