Meaning of Barren | Babel Free

Definitions

1. An area of low fertility and habitation, a desolate place.
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.
   plural-normally

Equivalents

Examples

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

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

“Snow Lies now four & five feet deep upon the Ground & the Air looks so Hazey that we think it Prudent to Return upon the Rocks & Barrens (for so they Call the Places where Wood does not Grow) we find that the wind had drifted the Snow Very thin Here we observe Some few Plants (1) Fir Moss, *Lycopodium Selago, (2) Rhein Deer Moss, Lichen Rangiferinus [Cladonia sp.], (3) A Kind of Horned Liverwort, Lichen, (4) a Plant that has very much the Appearance of Crow Berries, Empetrum [*Empetrum nigrum L.] of which I have only got the female which has 10 Stigmata.”

“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.”

“In Newfound-land there are barrens of many miles in extent, high, and, comparatively speaking, dry plateaus; but the barrens in the provinces I am speaking of vary from a little open space of a few acres to a plain of five or six miles[…]”

“The 'barrens' are covered with a rich carpet of moss of every shade and colour, and abound in all sorts of wild berries, pleasing both to the eye and taste.”

“[...] the Arctic strip extends from the exposed coasts of the outer islands, in onto the mainland for from one to three or four miles as a practically unbroken "barren," sprinkled with lichen-covered ledges and carpeted with turf of reindeer lichen, sphagnum, Empetrum, sedges, creeping willows, and various other species of herbaceous plants, including the following, kindly determined for us by Dr. B. L. Robinson of the Gray herbarium[…]”

“No pan is more rugged and inhospitable than these 'barrens,' the vast rolling plateaux of the interior, broken by stunted groups of wind-tom trees Only at the plateaux' edges.”

“Habitat: Bogs, Heaths (known as 'Barrens' in Newfoundland) and rough meadows near boglands. Range In the eastern area: Manitoba eastward; including northern Minnesota to Newfoundland (A.B. Klots).”

CEFR level