barren

5 definitions found

barren - Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 :

  Barren \Bar"ren\ (b[a^]r"ren), a. [OE. barein, OF. brehaing,
     fem. brehaigne, baraigne, F. br['e]haigne; of uncertain
     origin; cf. Arm. br['e]kha[~n], markha[~n], sterile; LL.
     brana a sterile mare, principally in Aquitanian and Spanish
     documents; Bisc. barau, baru, fasting.]
     1. Incapable of producing offspring; producing no young;
        sterile; -- said of women and female animals.
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              She was barren of children.           --Bp. Hall.
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     2. Not producing vegetation, or useful vegetation; sterile.
        "Barren mountain tracts." --Macaulay.
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     3. Unproductive; fruitless; unprofitable; empty.
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              Brilliant but barren reveries.        --Prescott.
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              Some schemes will appear barren of hints and matter.
                                                    --Swift.
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     4. Mentally dull; stupid. --Shak.
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     Barren flower, a flower which has only stamens without a
        pistil, or which has neither stamens nor pistils.
  
     Barren Grounds (Geog.), a vast tract in British America
        northward of the forest regions.
  
     Barren Ground bear (Zool.), a peculiar bear, inhabiting the
        Barren Grounds, now believed to be a variety of the brown
        bear of Europe.
  
     Barren Ground caribou (Zool.), a small reindeer (Rangifer  Gr[oe]nlandicus
        ) peculiar to the Barren Grounds and
        Greenland.
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  Barren \Bar"ren\, n.
     1. A tract of barren land.
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     2. pl. Elevated lands or plains on which grow small trees,
        but not timber; as, pine barrens; oak barrens. They are
        not necessarily sterile, and are often fertile. [Amer.]
        --J. Pickering.
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barren - WordNet (r) 2.1 (2005) :

  barren
      adj 1: providing no shelter or sustenance; "bare rocky hills";
             "barren lands"; "the bleak treeless regions of the high
             Andes"; "the desolate surface of the moon"; "a stark
             landscape" [syn: bare, barren, bleak, desolate,
             stark]
      2: not bearing offspring; "a barren woman"; "learned early in
         his marriage that he was sterile"
      3: completely wanting or lacking; "writing barren of insight";
         "young recruits destitute of experience"; "innocent of
         literary merit"; "the sentence was devoid of meaning" [syn:
         barren, destitute, devoid, free, innocent]
      n 1: an uninhabited wilderness that is worthless for
           cultivation; "the barrens of central Africa"; "the
           trackless wastes of the desert" [syn: barren, waste,
           wasteland]

barren - Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary :

  Barren
  For a woman to be barren was accounted a severe punishment among
  the Jews (Gen. 16:2; 30:1-23; 1 Sam. 1:6, 27; Isa. 47:9; 49:21;
  Luke 1:25). Instances of barrenness are noticed (Gen. 11:30;
  25:21; 29:31; Judg. 13:2, 3; Luke 1:7, 36).

barren - Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 :

  160 Moby Thesaurus words for "barren":
     abortive, acarpous, arid, bare, blah, bland, blank, bleached,
     bleak, bloodless, bootless, celibate, characterless, childless,
     clear, cold, colorless, counterproductive, dead, depleted, desert,
     desolate, devoid, dismal, draggy, drained, drearisome, dreary,
     dried-up, dry, dryasdust, dull, dusty, earthbound, effete,
     elephantine, empty, etiolated, exhausted, fade, fallow, fatuitous,
     fatuous, featureless, feckless, flat, fruitless, futile, gainless,
     gaunt, gelded, heavy, ho-hum, hollow, impotent, impoverished,
     inadequate, inane, ineffective, ineffectual, inefficacious,
     inexcitable, infecund, infertile, inoperative, insipid, invalid,
     irreclaimable, issueless, jejune, leached, leaden, lifeless,
     literal, low-spirited, menopausal, mundane, nonfertile,
     nonproducing, nonproductive, nonprolific, nonremunerative,
     nugacious, nugatory, null, null and void, of no force, otiose,
     pale, pallid, parched, pedestrian, plodding, pointless, poky,
     ponderous, poor, profitless, prosaic, prosing, prosy, rewardless,
     sine prole, slow, solemn, spiritless, staid, sterile, stiff,
     stodgy, stolid, stuffy, sucked dry, superficial, tasteless,
     tedious, teemless, unavailing, uncultivable, uncultivated,
     unfanciful, unfertile, unfruitful, unideal, unimaginative,
     uninspired, uninventive, unlively, unoriginal, unplowed, unpoetic,
     unproductive, unprofitable, unprolific, unrelieved, unremunerative,
     unrewarding, unromantic, unromanticized, unsown, untilled, useless,
     vacant, vacuous, vain, vapid, virgin, void, waste, wasted,
     wasteland, white, wild, wilderness, wildness, with nothing inside,
     without content, without issue, wooden, worn-out