Barling

name, noun

name, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The smallest pig in a litter; runt. UK, dialectal
  2. 2
    A pole; (carpentry) the cross rafter of a roof. Scotland, UK, dialectal, rare

    "A tripod can be formed of three hop poles or barlings. The former can be laid in depths up to 2^ metres and the latter in depths up to about 5 metres at low water if the tidal range does not exceed about 3 metres."

Proper Noun
  1. 1
    A surname.
  2. 2
    A village in Barling Magna parish, Rochford district, Essex, England (OS grid ref TQ9389).
  3. 3
    A city in Sebastian County, Arkansas, United States.

Example

More examples

"A tripod can be formed of three hop poles or barlings. The former can be laid in depths up to 2^ metres and the latter in depths up to about 5 metres at low water if the tidal range does not exceed about 3 metres."

Etymology

Etymology 1

From Middle English *barling, diminutive of Middle English bar, bor (“boar”), equivalent to boar + -ling. Compare Scots bar, bare, bair (“boar”).

Etymology 2

From Middle English barling, berling, from Old Norse berlingr (“bar, pole”) (found in berlings-áss (“bar, beam, plank, rail”)), a diminutive derived from Proto-Germanic *barō (“beam, bar, barrier”); equivalent to bar + -ling. Cognate with Swedish bärling (“pole, bar”).

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