Barnraising
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 The collective construction of a barn by members of a community, common in 18th- and 19th-century rural North America, and present-day Mennonite and Amish communities.
"It was founded on a deep knowledge of human nature; namely, upon the fact that people read most eagerly that which they already know, if it is about themselves or their neighbors, if it is a report of something they have been concerned in, a lecture they have heard, a fair, or festival, or wedding, or funeral, or barn-raising they have attended."
Example
More examples"It was founded on a deep knowledge of human nature; namely, upon the fact that people read most eagerly that which they already know, if it is about themselves or their neighbors, if it is a report of something they have been concerned in, a lecture they have heard, a fair, or festival, or wedding, or funeral, or barn-raising they have attended."
Etymology
From barn + raising.
More for "barnraising"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.