barracks

Etymology

It is the plural, and the usual form, of barrack,^[2][3] borrowed from French baraque (“hut, shed”),^[3][4][5][6] from Italian baracca (“hut”) or Spanish barraca (“soldier's tent, hut”).^[3][4][5][6] The American Heritage Dictionary traces the French word through barraque, Old Occitan baraca and Old Spanish barraca to Catalan barraca (“hut”),^[7] and Merriam-Webster, Collins and Dictionary.com also take it from Catalan.^[8][9][10] The Spanish and Catalan word is recorded from the 13th century, first in Medieval Latin documents from Valencia (1249).^[3][2] Its origin is uncertain.^[3][6][4] Diez derived it from barra (“bar”), and Skeat also thought it probably connected with the Late Latin word for a bar;^[3][11] others have looked for a Celtic or Arabic source.^[3][2] Klein took Spanish barraca, originally a hut of bricks, from barro (“clay”), probably of Iberian origin,^[12] and the American Heritage Dictionary suggests a mix of a source related to varga (“thatched hut”) and an Andalusian Arabic word perhaps meaning a hut for resting pack animals, from an Arabic verb meaning to make a camel kneel.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

A temporary hut or cabin, as for soldiers during a siege: 1686, in the London Gazette.^[3][4][2]

Semantic evolution

The sense of a set of buildings for lodging soldiers is recorded from 1697, usually in the plural and sometimes treated as a singular,^[3][4][2] and the singular barrack in this sense from 1698.^[3] Johnson (1755) defined barrack first as the little cabins made by Spanish fishermen on the shore, or little lodges for soldiers in a camp, and added that in England it was generally used of buildings for soldiers.^[13] The verb barrack, to lodge soldiers in barracks, followed in 1701.^[3][8] Weekley notes that French baraque still means a booth or hut, the original sense.^[14] From 1862 the word was also applied to any large, plain building in which many people are housed,^[3][9] and since 1887 to the quarters of the Salvation Army.^[3] In the United States a barrack was also a thatched roof on four posts that could be raised or lowered over hay, as Bartlett recorded in 1848.^[3] The Shorter Oxford notes that the old sense "temporary hut" survives only in northern dialect.^[5]

Timeline

• 1686 – a temporary hut, as for soldiers during a siege.^[3][4]
• 1697 – a set of buildings for lodging soldiers, usually plural.^[3][4]
• 1698 – singular barrack in the same sense.^[3]
• 1701 – verb barrack, to lodge in barracks.^[3][8]
• 1848 – in America, a movable roof over a stack of hay.^[3]
• 1862 – any large plain building housing many people.^[3]
• 1887 – the quarters of the Salvation Army.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. A building or group of buildings where soldiers or other military personnel live: The recruits marched back to the barracks.^[9][8][3]
2. Any large building used to house many people, especially for a short time.^[9][3]
3. A large, plain or bleak building.^[9][3]
4. (obsolete except in northern dialect) A temporary hut or cabin, as for soldiers during a siege.^[5][3][8]

Word family

• barracks bag

Related words

• barrack
• barracoon
• bar

Usage notes

Barracks is plural in form but is used with either a singular or a plural verb: the barracks is or the barracks are.^[9][8] The verb barrack in British, Australian and New Zealand English, to jeer at or shout at players or speakers, has a separate source: it appears in Australia in 1885 and is perhaps from a Northern Irish dialect word meaning to brag.^[3][9][15]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
8. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
9. ^ a b c d e f g Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
10. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
11. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
12. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
13. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
14. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
15. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)