bar
UK /bɑː/ · US /bɑɹ/ noun, verb, preposition, adverb, proper noun
Forms bars barring barred the Bar
- noun A solid, more or less rigid object of metal or wood with a uniform cross-section smaller than its length. “The window was protected by steel bars.”
- noun (countable, uncountable, metallurgy) A solid metal object with uniform (round, square, hexagonal, octagonal or rectangular) cross-section; in the US its smallest dimension is ¹⁄₄ inch or greater, a piece of thinner material being called a strip. “Ancient Sparta used iron bars instead of handy coins in more valuable alloy, to physically discourage the use of money.”
- noun A cuboid piece of any solid commodity. “bar of chocolate”
- noun A broad shaft, band, or stripe. “a bar of light”
- noun A long, narrow drawn or printed rectangle, cuboid or cylinder, especially as used in a bar code or a bar chart.
- noun (typography) Any of various lines used as punctuation or diacritics, such as the pipe ⟨|⟩, fraction bar (as in 12), and strikethrough (as in Ⱥ), formerly (obsolete) including oblique marks such as the slash.
- noun (mathematics) The sign indicating that the characteristic of a logarithm is negative, conventionally placed above the digit(s) to show that it applies to the characteristic only and not to the mantissa.
- noun (physics) A similar sign indicating that the charge on a particle is the negative of its usual value (and that consequently the particle is in fact an antiparticle).
- verb (transitive) To obstruct the passage of (someone or something). “Our way was barred by a huge rockfall.”
- verb (transitive) To prohibit. “I couldn't get into the nightclub because I had been barred.”
- verb (transitive) To lock or bolt with a bar. “to bar the door”
- verb To imprint or paint with bars, to stripe.
- preposition Except, other than, besides. “He invited everyone to his wedding bar his ex-wife.”
- adverb (horse racing) Denotes the minimum odds offered on other horses not mentioned by name. “Leg At Each Corner is at 3/1, Lost My Shirt 5/1, and it's 10/1 bar.”
- noun A non-SI unit of pressure equal to 100,000 pascals, slightly less than atmospheric pressure at sea level.
- noun (programming) A metasyntactic variable representing an unspecified entity, often the second in a series, following foo. “Suppose we have four objects, foo, bar, baz and quux.”
- noun (US, archaic, dialect) A bear.
- proper noun A town and municipality of Montenegro.
- proper noun A diminutive of the female given name Barbara.
- proper noun A diminutive of the male given name Barry.
Synonyms
barroom ginshop pub public house tavern alehouse boozer boozing ken bousing ken drinker drinkery gargle-factory gin joint groggery local nineteenth hole pot-house rummery saloon watering hole ginmill taproom measure prevention legal profession legal community stripe streak cake Browning automatic rifle
Antonyms
Etymology
From Middle English barre, from Old French barre (“beam, bar, gate, barrier”), from Vulgar Latin *barra, of uncertain origin. Doublet of barre.
From Middle English barren, from Old French barrer, from Medieval Latin barrare (“to bar”), from the noun. Cognate to Occitan barrar, Spanish barrar, Portuguese barrar.
Preposition properly imperative of the verb. Compare barring.
Borrowed from Ancient Greek βάρος (báros, “weight”), coined circa 1900.
From foobar, a phonetic respelling of FUBAR.
Webster’s 1913
- noun A piece of wood, metal, or other material, long in proportion to its breadth or thickness, used as a lever and for various other purposes, but especially for a hindrance, obstruction, or fastening; as, the bars of a fence or gate; the bar of a door.
- noun An indefinite quantity of some substance, so shaped as to be long in proportion to its breadth and thickness; as, a bar of gold or of lead; a bar of soap.
- verb To fasten with a bar; as, to bar a door or gate.
- verb To restrict or confine, as if by a bar; to hinder; to obstruct; to prevent; to prohibit; as, to bar the entrance of evil; distance bars our intercourse; the statute bars my right; the right is barred by time; a release bars the plaintiff's recovery; --sometimes with up. He barely looked the idea in the face, and hastened to bar it in its dungeon. Hawthorne.
Etymology [F. barrer. See Bar, n.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “bar”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details