barren

comparative barrener · comparative more barren · superlative barrenest · superlative most barren

1. not comparableNot bearing children, childless; hence also unable to bear children, sterile.

   I silently wept as my daughter's husband rejected her. What would she do now that she was no longer a maiden but also barren?

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   Forget not, in your speed, Antonius, To touch Calpurnia; for our elders say, The barren, touched in this holy chase, Shake off their sterile curse.

   1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, (please specify the act number in uppercase Roman numerals, and the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals)

   The druids […] believed that mistletoe could make barren animals fecund, and that it was an antidote to all poisons.

   2014 December 23, Olivia Judson, “The hemiparasite season [print version: Under the hemiparasite, International New York Times, 24–25 December 2014, p. 7]”, in The New York Times

2. not comparableNot bearing seed or fruit.
3. Of poor fertility, infertile; not producing vegetation; desert, waste.

   barren mountain tracts

   1849–1861, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter I, in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume (please specify |volume=I to V), London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, →OCLC

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   We have descended Tian Shan and entered the Taklamakan Desert, a barren landscape painted in ecru—no shrubs, no grass, only waves upon waves of naked ridges the color of buff, the highest few spotted with white specks of snow.

   2009, Y.J. Zhu, “Taklamakan Desert Moon Ride”, in Lucy McCauley, editor, The Best Women's Travel Writing 2009: True Stories from Around the World (Travelers' Tales), →ISBN, →ISSN, →OCLC, →OL, page 154

   Terraforming even a barren planet often involves significant financial and ethical hurdles.

   2017, BioWare, Mass Effect: Andromeda (Science Fiction), Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →OCLC, PC, scene: Technology: Terraforming Codex entry

4. with ofDevoid, lacking.

   August 28, 1731, Jonathan Swift, letter to John Gay But schemes are perfectly accidental. Some will appear barren of hints and matter, but prove to be fruitful.

   Synonyms: destitute, bereft

5. Devoid of interest or attraction, poor, bleak.

   As they turned into Hertford Street they startled a robin from the poet's head on a barren fountain, and he fled away with a cameo note.

   1922, Michael Arlen, “Epilogue Chapter IV”, in “Piracy”: A Romantic Chronicle of These Days, section 2

6. Unproductive, fruitless, unprofitable; empty, hollow, vain.

   brilliant but barren reveries

   1843, William H[ickling] Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico, […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), New York, N.Y.: Harper and Brothers, […], →OCLC

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   A third is wroth: ‘Is this an hour ⁠For private sorrow’s barren song, ⁠When more and more the people throng The chairs and thrones of civil power?’

   1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], “Canto XXI”, in In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 35

   When the entire coast-line becomes a sea of waving palms, with Chinese and Malay villages fringing the shores, which are at present mere barren wastes of mangroves, with plantations of pepper, of gambier, and of tapioca and rice, the Northern Territory, backed up by the unswerving energy of the Australian squatter, miner, and planter, will present a spectacle almost unknown in the scheme of British colonization.

   1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 270

   Rooney had been suffered a barren spell for England with only one goal in 15 games but he was in no mood to ignore the gifts on offer in front of an increasingly subdued Bulgarian support.

   2011 September 2, Phil McNulty, “Bulgaria 0-3 England”, in BBC

   As the glut of new orders placed in the optimistic pre-pandemic years (worth billions of pounds) reaches its conclusion, production lines in Newton Aycliffe, Derby and Newport face a potentially barren future - as well as job losses that will be devastating for their communities and supply chains.

   2024 March 20, Ben Jones, “Suppliers' uncertain wait for new trains”, in RAIL, number 1005, page 36

   Synonyms: idle

7. Mentally dull or unproductive; stupid or intellectually fallow.

   Set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too.

   c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene ii]

plural barrens

1. An area of low fertility and habitation, a desolate place.

   Sol squinted out over the barrens to where the mountains shimmered in the heat haze.

   1990, Dan Simmons, The Fall of Hyperion, 1st edition, New York: Doubleday, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 165

2. plural normallyIn particular, a usually elevated and flat expanse of land that only supports the growth of small trees and shrubs, and sometimes mosses or heathers, berries, and other marshy or moory vegetation, but little agriculture and few people.

   The pine barrens are a site lonely enough to suit any hermit.

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   Snow Lies now four & five feet deep upon the Ground & the Air looks so Hazey that we think it Prudent to Return upon the Rocks & Barrens (for so they Call the Places where Wood does not Grow) we find that the wind had drifted the Snow Very thin Here we observe Some few Plants (1) Fir Moss, *Lycopodium Selago, (2) Rhein Deer Moss, Lichen Rangiferinus [Cladonia sp.], (3) A Kind of Horned Liverwort, Lichen, (4) a Plant that has very much the Appearance of Crow Berries, Empetrum [*Empetrum nigrum L.] of which I have only got the female which has 10 Stigmata.

   1971 [1766], Averil M. Lysaght, Joseph Banks in Newfoundland and Labrador, 1766: His Diary, Manuscripts, and Collections, Univ of California Press, →ISBN, page 121

   Here it was now, by the side of a Swamp in the Barrens of Newfoundland, threadbare, wet, dirty.

   1968 (originally written: 1794), Aaron Thomas, The Newfoundland Journal of Aaron Thomas, page 104

   What is known of it consists of a rocky and barren soil, steep hills covered with bad wood, some narrow and sandy valleys, extensive plains covered either with heath, or with rocky surfaces, more or less extensive, where not a tree or shrub is to be seen, and which are from thence usually called Barrens.

   1819, Lewis Amadeus Anspach, A History of the Island of Newfoundland: Containing a Description of the Island, the Banks, the Fisheries and Trade of Newfoundland and the Coast of Labrador, page 294

   The 'barrens' of Newfoundland are those districts which occupy the summits of the hills and ridges, and other elevated and exposed tracts. They are covered with a thin and scrubby vegetation, consisting of berry-bearing plants and dwarf bushes of various species, and are somewhat similar in appearance to the moorlands of the north of England, differing only in the kind of vegetation.

   1843, Joseph Beete Jukes, General Report of the Geological Survey of Newfoundland: Executed Under the Direction of the Government and Legislature of the Colony During the Years 1839 and 1840, page 22

   In Newfound-land there are barrens of many miles in extent, high, and, comparatively speaking, dry plateaus; but the barrens in the provinces I am speaking of vary from a little open space of a few acres to a plain of five or six miles[…]

   1879, Littell's Living Age, page 362