BARN

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does barn mean? 

• BARN (noun)
  The noun BARN has 2 senses:

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

2. (physics) a unit of nuclear cross section; the effective circular area that one particle presents to another as a target for an encounter

  Familiarity information: BARN used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• BARN (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

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

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Hypernyms ("barn" is a kind of...):

farm building (a building on a farm)

Meronyms (parts of "barn"):

hayloft; haymow; mow (a loft in a barn where hay is stored)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "barn"):

byre; cow barn; cowbarn; cowhouse; cowshed (a barn for cows)

tithe barn (barn originally built to hold tithes paid in kind and common in England)

Sense 2

Meaning:

(physics) a unit of nuclear cross section; the effective circular area that one particle presents to another as a target for an encounter

Classified under:

Nouns denoting quantities and units of measure

Synonyms:

b; barn

Hypernyms ("barn" is a kind of...):

area unit; square measure (a system of units used to measure areas)

Domain category:

atomic physics; nuclear physics; nucleonics (the branch of physics that studies the internal structure of atomic nuclei)

 Context examples 

Winthrop, without beauty and without dignity, was stretched before them; an indifferent house, standing low, and hemmed in by the barns and buildings of a farm-yard.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

There will be a house to live in and a stable for the horses, and cow-barns, of course.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

The stress of travel also extends to piglets, such as when they’re weaned from their mothers and transported to nursery barns.

(Antibiotic Alternative Scores Well in Second Round of Swine Trials, U.S. Department of Agriculture)

One barn is approximately equal to the area of a uranium nucleus.

(Barn, NCI Thesaurus)

But the worst of it was that with the course I now held we turned our broadside instead of our stern to the HISPANIOLA and offered a target like a barn door.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

Still protecting his throat and face with his torn and bleeding arm, he tried to retreat to the barn.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

There were also pretty little barns, with china fences around them; and many cows and sheep and horses and pigs and chickens, all made of china, were standing about in groups.

(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum)

I daresay it is only a rat scrambling along the rafters of the adjoining schoolroom: it was a barn before I had it repaired and altered, and barns are generally haunted by rats.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

My dear creature, she actually rowed it over the river, put it on her head, and marched up to the barn to the utter amazement of the old man!

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

They are all used as barns and store-houses.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)