Barrel

How to spell barrel

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce barrel

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does barrel mean?

1. nounA round, often wooden, container with bulging sides, used to store liquids or goods.
2. verbTo move very fast and somewhat recklessly in a particular direction.

Barrel in a sentence

• noun

  The cellar held an oak barrel of aged whisky.

• verb

  The truck began to barrel down the motorway at alarming speed.

• noun

  The price of crude oil is quoted per barrel.

• verb

  Shoppers barrel through the doors the moment the sale opened.

Where does barrel come from?

Language of origin: French

The word comes from the Old French baril, meaning a cask or wooden container, which English adopted in the early 1300s. The deeper origin is uncertain but the term was widespread across the medieval Romance languages, appearing as barril in Spanish and barile in Italian, all describing a rounded wooden vessel for storing liquids. Some scholars link it to a Late Latin form barriclus, though the chain of evidence is incomplete, so the ultimate source remains debated. Over time the sense broadened from the cask itself to a unit of measure for goods like oil, beer, and apples, and later to the tubular part of a gun or a pen. The single 'r' followed by the doubled 'l' (in British and Canadian usage) is the usual stumbling point, since the word sounds as though either consonant might double.

How the word is built

• barrel (single root, from Old French baril 'cask'); no separating prefix or suffix