byre

Etymology

From Middle English bire, bier, byr, from Old English bȳre.

noun

  1. (chiefly Britain) A barn, especially one used for keeping cattle in.
    It was here in the kitchen, in the passage, In the mews in the harn in the byre in the market-place … 1935, T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral, Part II
    ’Children crawled over each other like little grey worms in the gutters,’ he said. ‘The only red things about them were their buttocks and they were raw. Their faces looked as if snails had slimed on them and their mothers were like great sick beasts whose byres had never been cleared. […]’ 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 7, in The China Governess
    The visitors came up the narrow road through the forest from the south; they filled the spare-rooms, they bunked out in cow byres and barns. 1999, Neil Gaiman, Stardust, page 9 (2001 Perennial Edition)

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