Barn

How to spell barn

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce barn

What does barn mean?

1. nounA large farm building used for storing crops, hay, or machinery, or for housing livestock.

Barn in a sentence

• The farmer stacked the bales of hay inside the barn.

• The horses were led back into the barn before the storm.

Where does barn come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word barn comes straight from Old English, where it was formed by joining bere, meaning 'barley', with ern or aern, meaning 'a storehouse or building set aside for a purpose'. So the earliest barn was literally a barley store, a building dedicated to keeping grain. Over time the second element faded into the modern single-syllable word, and the meaning broadened from a grain store to any large farm building for crops, hay, or livestock. Because the word is purely native English rather than a later French or Latin borrowing, its spelling has stayed short and plain. The compound origin is largely invisible now, which is why few people guess that 'barn' once meant a place just for barley.

How the word is built

• From Old English bere (barley)
• ern (storage place), originally 'barley store'