Etymologically
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barren

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Pronunciation

  • UK: /ˈbæɹən/[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English barain, also bareine and barren,[2] borrowed from Anglo-Norman barain, feminine baraine,[3][4][2] from Old French baraigne, also brahaigne and barhaine,[5][6][7][8] the feminine of brahain or baraing, which was used especially of barren land.[3][6] The Anglo-Norman word is recorded from 1113–19, of land, people and animals.[9] It survives as French bréhaigne, used of sterile animals.[10][11][4] The further origin of the French word is uncertain or unknown.[5][11][12][8][13] The OED reports Diez's derivation from bar (“man, male”), as if "male-like, not bearing young", which suits the sense, but it thinks brahain the original form.[5] The American Heritage Dictionary and Barnhart think it perhaps of Germanic origin,[7][3] and Wiktionary proposes Frankish *baʀ (“bare, barren”), from Proto-Germanic *bazaz (“bare”), which would make it a cognate of bare.[1] Dictionary.com instead compares Spanish breña (“scrubby, uncultivated ground”) and takes the word as apparently Celtic, comparing Welsh braenar and Irish branar (“fallow”);[10] Partridge also proposed a Breton origin,[14] while the OED holds that Breton bréchagn was borrowed from French.[5] Merriam-Webster thinks the word probably not Indo-European and related to the source of Albanian beronjë (“sterile”).[15] Weekley tentatively connected it with Old High German ham (“mutilated”),[16] and Johnson had derived it from bare.[17]

Earliest recorded meaning

Of a woman, having had no children, or unable to bear them: about 1200, in the Trinity College Homilies, of a woman who could have no child.[5][2] Barnhart dates it to before 1200 and notes that it was said especially of women.[3]

Semantic evolution

From women the word spread to animals that were not pregnant at the usual season (about 1400, in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight) and to trees and plants that bore no fruit (about 1405, in Chaucer's Knight's Tale).[5] Its use of males is rare,[6] although the OED records it from 1617 of sterile or castrated male animals.[5] Of land producing little or no vegetation it is found in Langland's Piers Plowman in 1377,[5][6] and figurative senses followed quickly: bare of ideas or interest, meagre (before 1387, in Trevisa),[5][3] fruitless or unprofitable (1549),[5] and of people, mentally dull (1600, in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream).[5] The noun is recorded by the mid-13th century for a barren woman,[6][2] and for a tract of barren land from 1651;[15] in North America barrens are level lands with little vegetation, which Bartlett (1848) described as plains with small trees but never timber,[6][15] and the Barren Grounds of northern Canada are recorded from 1691.[5] A verb barren, to make barren, was used from 1581 to 1725.[5][4] In dialect the noun was used in Westmorland, Yorkshire and Lincolnshire for the external sexual organs of a cow, and in Montgomeryshire and Kent for a cow or ewe that had stopped breeding; in west Somerset a barren cow was simply one not in calf, with no implication that she could not breed.[18]

Timeline

  • c. 1200 – of a woman, childless or unable to bear children.[5][2]
  • before 1250 – noun, a barren woman.[2]
  • 1377 – of land, producing little or no vegetation.[5]
  • before 1387 – figurative, bare, meagre, dry.[5]
  • c. 1400 – of animals, not pregnant at the usual season.[5]
  • c. 1405 – of trees and plants, without fruit or seed.[5]
  • 1549 – fruitless, unprofitable.[5]
  • 1581 – verb, to make barren (obsolete by 1725).[5]
  • 1600 – of people, mentally dull.[5]
  • 1651 – noun, a tract of barren land.[15]
  • 1691 – the Barren Grounds of northern Canada.[5]

Meanings

Adjective

  1. Unable to produce children or young; sterile; of a female animal, not pregnant: The old ewes that had proved barren were sold at the fair.[19][15][5]
  2. Of a tree or plant, bearing no fruit or seed.[19][15][20]
  3. Of land, too poor to support much vegetation; bare and unproductive: a barren, windswept plateau.[19][20][15]
  4. Bleak and lifeless; lacking in interest or ideas; dull.[19][20]
  5. Producing no useful results; unprofitable: a barren decade for the club.[19][5]
  6. barren of: entirely lacking in something: a report barren of new proposals.[20][5]

Noun

  1. (usually barrens, chiefly North American) A stretch of level land with little vegetation or only stunted trees.[15][20]

Word family

  • barrenly
  • barrenness
  • barren strawberry

References

  1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
  3. ^ a b c d e Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  4. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  5. ^ 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 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  6. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  7. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  8. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  9. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
  10. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
  11. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  12. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  13. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  14. ^ Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
  15. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  16. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
  17. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
  18. ^ 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)
  19. ^ a b c d e Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
  20. ^ a b c d e Soanes, Catherine; Stevenson, Angus, eds. (2004), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press