barrier

noun

1. 1

   A structure that bars passage.

   The bus went through a railway barrier and was hit by a train.

   The bomber had passed through one checkpoint before blowing himself up at a second barrier.

2. 2

   An obstacle or impediment.

   Even a small fee can be a barrier for some students.

   If there's one thing the history of evolution has taught us is that life will not be contained- life breaks free, it expands to new territories, and it crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously but,... uh... well, there it is.

   America’s poverty line is $63 a day for a family of four. In the richer parts of the emerging world $4 a day is the poverty barrier. But poverty’s scourge is fiercest below $1.25 ([…]): people below that level live lives that are poor, nasty, brutish and short.

3. 3

   A boundary or limit.

   Few marathon runners break the three-hour time barrier.

   The downside of normalization is that it erects a defensive barrier between the real world and the perceived i.e. normalized world.

4. 4

   A node (in government and binding theory) said to intervene between other nodes A and B if it is a potential governor for B, c-commands B, and does not c-command A.

5. 5

   A separation between two areas of the body where specialized cells allow the entry of certain substances but prevent the entry of others.

6. 6

   historicalThe lists in a tournament.

7. 7

   historicalA martial exercise of the 15th and 16th centuries.

verb

1. 1

   To block or obstruct with a barrier.

Forms

plural

barriers

past tense

barriered

past participle

barriered

present participle

barriering

third person singular

barriers