Barre

How to spell barre

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce barre

What does barre mean?

1. nounThe horizontal handrail that dancers hold for support during warm-up and technique exercises.
2. nounA fitness class combining ballet-inspired movements with small, controlled muscle exercises.
3. nounA guitar technique in which one finger presses several strings flat across a single fret.

Barre in a sentence

• The ballet students lined up along the barre for their morning stretches.

• She signed up for a weekly barre class to build core strength.

• Learning the F chord means mastering a tricky barre across all six strings.

• She gripped the barre and raised her leg slowly into position.

• The gym now offers barre alongside yoga and pilates.

• His fingers ached from holding the barre for the whole song.

Where does barre come from?

Language of origin: French

This word comes straight from the French barre, meaning a bar or rod, the same Old French word that also gave English the everyday word 'bar'. The French term descended from the medieval Latin barra, a 'rod' or 'barrier', whose ultimate origin is uncertain and may be pre-Roman. English kept the original French spelling, with its silent final 'e' and doubled 'r', specifically for the specialised dance and music senses, while the plainer 'bar' covered general uses. The reason the spelling feels tricky is precisely that it preserves this French dress rather than the anglicised form. In ballet the barre has been the fixed rail dancers grip during warm-up exercises since the discipline became formalised in French-speaking courts and academies, which is why the French spelling stuck.

How the word is built

• barre (from French barre: bar, rod)

Words that sound like barre

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• bar: A long, rigid piece of solid material, or a similarly shaped block.