barn
barn Lexical Profile
barn Game Scores & Validity
• noun
A large agricultural building on a farm used for storing grain, hay, and farm equipment, as well as for housing livestock such as cattle and horses.
"The farmer spent the afternoon repairing the wooden roof of the old red barn before the winter snow arrived."
North American A large shed, depot, or hangar used for housing and maintaining commercial vehicles such as streetcars, buses, or locomotives.
"After completing the final route of the evening, the driver returned the electric streetcar to the transit barn."
A metric unit of area used in nuclear and particle physics to measure the cross-section of atomic nuclei and scattering interactions, equal to 10^-28 square meters.
"The research team calculated the neutron capture cross-section of the isotope in barns."
• verb
To store or lay up harvested crops, hay, or agricultural produce in a barn for safekeeping or curing.
"The crew worked until dusk to barn the freshly harvested tobacco leaves before the rainstorm hit."
• Rhymes for barn
Word Origin & Etymology
Derived from Old English 'bereærn', a compound of 'bere' (barley) and 'ærn' (house or storage place), literally meaning 'barley-house'. In nuclear physics, the unit of area was playfully coined in 1942 by American physicists from the idiom 'couldn't hit the broad side of a barn', as a cross-sectional area of 10^-28 square meters was considered unusually large on an atomic scale.