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barley.

A cereal of the species Hordeum vulgare or its grains, often used as food or to make beer and other malted drinks.

6 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈbɑɹli/General-American/ˈbɑːli/Received-Pronunciation
  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. The seed of Job's tears (Coix lacryma-jobi).

    Singapore · uncountable · usually
Where this word comes from

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.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.