barrier

plural barriers

1. A structure that bars passage.

   The bus went through a railway barrier and was hit by a train.

   1 more example

   The bomber had passed through one checkpoint before blowing himself up at a second barrier.

2. An obstacle or impediment.

   Even a small fee can be a barrier for some students.

   2 more examples

   If there's one thing the history of evolution has taught us is that life will not be contained- life breaks free, it expands to new territories, and it crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously but,... uh... well, there it is.

   1993, Jurassic Park, Universal Pictures, →OCLC

   America’s poverty line is $63 a day for a family of four. In the richer parts of the emerging world $4 a day is the poverty barrier. But poverty’s scourge is fiercest below $1.25 ([…]): people below that level live lives that are poor, nasty, brutish and short.

   2013 June 1, “Towards the end of poverty”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8838, page 11

3. A boundary or limit.

   Few marathon runners break the three-hour time barrier.

   1 more example

   The downside of normalization is that it erects a defensive barrier between the real world and the perceived i.e. normalized world.

   2025 April 21, Charles Hugh Smith, What's "Normal" in a Hyper-Normalized World?

4. grammarA node (in government and binding theory) said to intervene between other nodes A and B if it is a potential governor for B, c-commands B, and does not c-command A.
5. medicineA separation between two areas of the body where specialized cells allow the entry of certain substances but prevent the entry of others.
6. historicalThe lists in a tournament.
7. historicalin pluralA martial exercise of the 15th and 16th centuries.

present singular third person barriers · participle present barriering · participle past barriered · past barriered

1. transitiveTo block or obstruct with a barrier.

   Synonyms: bar

plural Barriers

1. A surname from French.