barren

adjectif

1. 1

   Not bearing children, childless; hence also unable to bear children, sterile.

   I silently wept as my daughter's husband rejected her. What would she do now that she was no longer a maiden but also barren?

   Forget not, in your speed, Antonius, To touch Calpurnia; for our elders say, The barren, touched in this holy chase, Shake off their sterile curse.

   The druids […] believed that mistletoe could make barren animals fecund, and that it was an antidote to all poisons.

2. 2

   Not bearing seed or fruit.

3. 3

   Of poor fertility, infertile; not producing vegetation; desert, waste.

   barren mountain tracts

   We have descended Tian Shan and entered the Taklamakan Desert, a barren landscape painted in ecru—no shrubs, no grass, only waves upon waves of naked ridges the color of buff, the highest few spotted with white specks of snow.

   Terraforming even a barren planet often involves significant financial and ethical hurdles.

4. 4

   Devoid, lacking.

   August 28, 1731, Jonathan Swift, letter to John Gay But schemes are perfectly accidental. Some will appear barren of hints and matter, but prove to be fruitful.

5. 5

   Devoid of interest or attraction, poor, bleak.

   As they turned into Hertford Street they startled a robin from the poet's head on a barren fountain, and he fled away with a cameo note.

6. 6

   Unproductive, fruitless, unprofitable; empty, hollow, vain.

   brilliant but barren reveries

   A third is wroth: ‘Is this an hour ⁠For private sorrow’s barren song, ⁠When more and more the people throng The chairs and thrones of civil power?’

   Rooney had been suffered a barren spell for England with only one goal in 15 games but he was in no mood to ignore the gifts on offer in front of an increasingly subdued Bulgarian support.

   As the glut of new orders placed in the optimistic pre-pandemic years (worth billions of pounds) reaches its conclusion, production lines in Newton Aycliffe, Derby and Newport face a potentially barren future - as well as job losses that will be devastating for their communities and supply chains.

7. 7

   Mentally dull or unproductive; stupid or intellectually fallow.

   Set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too.

nom

1. 1

   An area of low fertility and habitation, a desolate place.

   Sol squinted out over the barrens to where the mountains shimmered in the heat haze.

2. 2

   In particular, a usually elevated and flat expanse of land that only supports the growth of small trees and shrubs, and sometimes mosses or heathers, berries, and other marshy or moory vegetation, but little agriculture and few people.

   The pine barrens are a site lonely enough to suit any hermit.

   Here it was now, by the side of a Swamp in the Barrens of Newfoundland, threadbare, wet, dirty.

   What is known of it consists of a rocky and barren soil, steep hills covered with bad wood, some narrow and sandy valleys, extensive plains covered either with heath, or with rocky surfaces, more or less extensive, where not a tree or shrub is to be seen, and which are from thence usually called Barrens.

   The 'barrens' of Newfoundland are those districts which occupy the summits of the hills and ridges, and other elevated and exposed tracts. They are covered with a thin and scrubby vegetation, consisting of berry-bearing plants and dwarf bushes of various species, and are somewhat similar in appearance to the moorlands of the north of England, differing only in the kind of vegetation.

Formes

pluriel

barrens

comparatif

barrener, more barren

superlatif

barrenest, most barren