Barbed

How to spell barbed

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce barbed

What does barbed mean?

1. adjectiveFitted with sharp backward-pointing spikes, or (of words) sharply critical and intended to wound.

Barbed in a sentence

• The farmer ran a length of barbed wire along the boundary fence.

• Her barbed reply silenced everyone at the meeting.

Where does barbed come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin barba, meaning 'beard', which gave Old French barbe and the related word barbe in the sense of a beard-like point or spike. The noun 'barb' entered English in the late 1300s describing the sharp backward-pointing prong on an arrow, a hook, or a spear, the part that catches on flesh so the point cannot easily be pulled free. From that noun came the adjective 'barbed', formed simply by adding the suffix -ed to mean 'fitted with barbs'. The 'beard' connection is no accident: those projecting spikes reminded people of bristling whiskers, and the same Latin root underlies 'barber', the person who trims beards. By the time barbed wire was patented in the 1870s the word was firmly established, and the figurative sense of a 'barbed' remark, one that is pointed and meant to wound, grew naturally from the same image of something sharp that catches and hurts.

How the word is built

• barb (point or hook; ultimately from Latin barba 'beard')
• -ed (adjective-forming suffix)