barren has definitions from the field of geography
1
[ adjective ] not fertile or productive

Synonyms

infertile

Examples

"a barren tree" "soil too infertile to sustain real pasture"

Used in print

(Leon Uris, Mila 8....)

Beyond the forest all our paths merge into a single great highway which ends in the barren , eroded hills of Judea .

Related terms

unfruitful

2
[ adjective ] without offspring

Synonyms

childless

Examples

"in some societies a barren woman is rejected by her tribesmen"

Used in print

(Frieda Arkin, "The Light of the Sea," in The...)

What hope lay_in the nephews , she asked the intensifying light out there , with one married to a barren woman and the other divorced , having sired two girl children , with none to bear_on the Packard name ?

Related terms

unfruitful

3
[ adjective ] incapable of sustaining life

Examples

"the dead and barren Moon"

Related terms

dead

4
[ adjective ] not bearing offspring

Synonyms

sterile

Examples

"a barren woman" "learned early in his marriage that he was sterile"

Related terms

infertile

5
[ adjective ] providing no shelter or sustenance

Examples

"bare rocky hills" "barren lands" "the bleak treeless regions of the high Andes" "the desolate surface of the moon" "a stark landscape"

Related terms

inhospitable

6
[ noun ] Last name, frequency rank in the U.S. is 17461
7
[ noun ] (geography) an uninhabited wilderness that is worthless for cultivation

Synonyms

wasteland waste

Examples

"the barrens of central Africa" "the trackless wastes of the desert"

Related terms

wilderness heath

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