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Barren   /bˈærən/  /bˈɛrən/   Listen
adjective
Barren  adj.  
1.
Incapable of producing offspring; producing no young; sterile; said of women and female animals. "She was barren of children."
2.
Not producing vegetation, or useful vegetation; sterile. "Barren mountain tracts."
3.
Unproductive; fruitless; unprofitable; empty. "Brilliant but barren reveries." "Some schemes will appear barren of hints and matter."
4.
Mentally dull; stupid.
Barren flower, a flower which has only stamens without a pistil, or which has neither stamens nor pistils.
Barren Grounds (Geog.), a vast tract in British America northward of the forest regions.
Barren Ground bear (Zool.), a peculiar bear, inhabiting the Barren Grounds, now believed to be a variety of the brown bear of Europe.
Barren Ground caribou (Zool.), a small reindeer (Rangifer Groenlandicus) peculiar to the Barren Grounds and Greenland.



noun
Barren  n.  
1.
A tract of barren land.
2.
pl. Elevated lands or plains on which grow small trees, but not timber; as, pine barrens; oak barrens. They are not necessarily sterile, and are often fertile. (Amer.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Barren" Quotes from Famous Books



... the extensive planting of pine trees for food purposes will have to wait until we have advanced to the point of putting other kinds of nut trees upon good ground first. Pines will be employed for the more barren hillsides when the folks of three hundred years from now begin to complain of the high cost ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various

... extensive coal-mining operations were carried on. At the latter, the Dragon took in a fresh supply of coal, which would carry her, if properly husbanded, across the Pacific. Steaming northward, she entered the bay of Valparaiso, which Tom, as he looked at the barren, red, and bare hills surrounding it, with scarce a bush except the cactus to be seen, pronounced a very odd sort of Paradise. The town stands partly on the shores of the bay, and chiefly on a number of hills separated by valleys, with the mighty Cordilleras rising beyond, giving the scenery, ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston

... past. Long before your race knew this continent existed, my people were in the vigor and glory of national prosperity. From the extreme north, where the icebergs never yield to the sun, through the variations of temperature to the barren rocks in the farthest south, were ours, all, from ocean ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle

... way diminished the disgust which filled his soul. What quality was there lacking in the Latin races which rendered them so untrustworthy? His crew had mutinied, de Poincilit was ready to consign his companions in misfortune to a most frightful death on the barren island, and here was Suarez hugging to his breast a ghastly secret which chance alone had brought to light. He strove hard to repress the contempt which rose in his gorge, as it was essential that ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy

... priori, but they are valid for objects of experience alone. The conflict concerns, secondly, the use of the deductive (syllogistic) or the inductive method. Empiricism, through its founder Bacon, had recommended induction in place of the barren syllogistic method, as the only method which would lead to new discoveries. It demands, above all things, the extension of knowledge. Rationalism, on the contrary, held fast to the deductive method, because ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg


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