Barley
name, noun ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 A cereal of the species Hordeum vulgare, or its grains, often used as food or to make beer and other malted drinks. uncountable, usually
- 2 a grain of barley wordnet
- 3 The seed of Job's tears. (Coix lacryma-jobi) Singapore, uncountable, usually
- 4 cultivated since prehistoric times; grown for forage and grain wordnet
- 1 A village in Hertfordshire, England. countable, uncountable
- 2 A village in Lancashire, England. countable, uncountable
- 3 A surname. countable, uncountable
Example
More examples"Can you tell wheat from barley?"
Etymology
From Middle English barly, barli, from Old English bærlīċ (“barley-like”, adjective) (later referring to barley itself and grain crops of similar appearance), from bere (“barley”) (compare Scots bere (“six-rowed barley”)), from Proto-Germanic *baraz (compare Old Norse barr), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰers- (“spike, prickle”). Equivalent to bere + -ly. See English brew.
* The village in Hertfordshire is from "Beora's ley," from *Beora + -ley (“clearing, lea”). The former is a personal name from Old English bera (“bear”). * The village in Lancashire is from Old English bar (“boar”) or bere (“barley”) + leah (“clearing”). * As an English surname, from the noun barley. As a south German surname, spelling variant of Behrle, Beerli, themselves related to the noun bear.
Related phrases
More for "barley"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.