noun, slang ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   Any set of machine-readable parallel bars or concentric circles, varying in width, spacing, or height, encoding information according to a symbology.
2. 2
   A portion of a gene that identifies a particular species.
3. 3
   An instance of self-harm, typically with multiple parallel cuts along a line, similar in form to a machine barcode. slang

Example

More examples

"The cashier scanned the barcode."

Etymology

Compound of bar + code. First attested in 1963 for sense 1.

Related phrases

barcode readerbarcode scannerqr code

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.