barn

Etymology 1

From Middle English bern, from Old English bearn, bern, contracted forms of Old English berern, bereærn (“barn, granary”), compound of bere (“barley”) and ærn, ræn (“dwelling, barn”), from Proto-West Germanic *raʀn, from Proto-Germanic *razną (compare Old Norse rann), from pre-Germanic *h₁rh̥₁-s-nó-, from Proto-Indo-European *h₁erh₁- (“to rest”). More at rest and barley. For the use as a unit of surface area, see w:Barn (unit) § Etymology.

noun

1. (agriculture) A building, often found on a farm, used for storage or keeping animals such as cattle.
   One day I was out in the barn and he drifted in. I was currying the horse and he set down on the wheelbarrow and begun to ask questions. 1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, chapter 11, in Mr. Pratt's Patients
2. (nuclear physics) A unit of surface area equal to 10⁻²⁸ square metres.
3. (informal, basketball, ice hockey) An arena.
   Maple Leaf Gardens was a grand old barn.
4. (slang) A warm and cozy place, especially a bedroom; a roost.

verb

1. (transitive) To lay up in a barn.
   But like still-pining Tantalus he sits / And useless barns the harvest of his wits 1594, Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece, line 859
   Hypocrites, in like manner, so act holiness that they pass for saints before men, whose censures often barn up the chaff, and burn up the grain. 1645, Thomas Fuller, Good Thoughts in Bad Times; Good Thoughts in Worse Times; Mixt Contemplations in Better Times, published 1863, page 165

Etymology 2

From Middle English barn, bern, from Old English bearn (“child, son, offspring, progeny”) and Old Norse barn (“child”). Doublet of bairn. Cognate to Frisian bern ("child/children"), Middle Dutch baren (“child”).

noun

1. (dialect, parts of Northern England) A child.