bar

bar · noun¹

1. Vulgar Latin*barra
2. Old Frenchbarre
3. Middle Englishbarre
4. English todaybar

From Middle English barre, from Old French barre (“beam, bar, gate, barrier”), from Vulgar Latin *barra, of uncertain origin. Doublet of barre.

bar · verb, preposition, adverb²

1. Medieval Latin · derived frombarrare“to bar”
2. Old French · derived frombarrer
3. Middle English · inherited frombarren
4. English todaybar

From Middle English barren, from Old French barrer, from Medieval Latin barrare (“to bar”), from the noun. Cognate to Occitan barrar, Spanish barrar, Portuguese barrar. Preposition properly imperative of the verb. Compare barring.

bar · noun³

1. German · borrowed fromBar
2. Ancient Greek · borrowed fromβάρος“weight”
3. English todaybar

Borrowed from Ancient Greek βάρος (báros, “weight”), as a variant of earlier barye and barad. First attested as sense 2 by suggestion of Theodore William Richards in 1903, while sense 1 was proposed by Vilhelm Bjerknes, who first published about it in 1906 as German Bar, see there for more.

bar · noun⁴

From foobar, a phonetic respelling of FUBAR.

bar · noun⁵

Variant of bear.

Bar · proper noun⁶

1. Serbo-Croatian · borrowed fromBȃr
2. English todayBar

From Serbo-Croatian Bȃr.

Bar · proper noun⁷

Shortenings.

Bar · proper noun⁸

1. Ukrainian · borrowed fromБар
2. English todayBar

From Ukrainian Бар (Bar).

Bar · proper noun⁹

From בר.

Words from the same roots

First known use, by meaning

• from 1905 A non-SI unit of pressure equal to 100,000 pascals, i.e. a megadyne per square centimetre.
• 1903–1900s A dyne per square centimetre, i.e. a microbar in the modern sense.