barnacle.
A marine crustacean of the subclass Cirripedia that attaches itself to submerged surfaces such as tidal rocks or the bottoms of ships.
Meaning & usage
A marine crustacean of the subclass Cirripedia that attaches itself to submerged surfaces such as tidal rocks or the bottoms of ships.
The barnacle goose.
In electrical engineering, a change made to a product on the manufacturing floor that was not part of the original product design.
On printed circuit boards, a change such as soldering a wire in order to connect two points, or addition such as an added resistor or capacitor, subassembly or daughterboard.
A deprecated or obsolete file, image or other artifact that remains with a project even though it is no longer needed.
An instrument like a pair of pincers, to fix on the nose of a vicious horse while shoeing so as to make it more tractable.
A pair of spectacles.
A good job, or snack easily obtained.
A worldly sailor.
Where this word comes from
Uncertain, with long-debated origin. From Middle English barnakille, from earlier bernake, bernekke, most likely from Old Northern French bernaque (“barnacle”) (compare French barnache), probably from Medieval Latin barneca (“limpet”), probably from Gaulish (compare Welsh brennig, Irish bairneach), from Proto-Celtic *barannīkos, from *barinā (“rock, rocky ground”) (compare Old Irish barenn (“boulder”)), from Proto-Indo-European *gʷr̥H- (“hill, mountain”) + Proto-Celtic *-ākos, from Proto-Indo-European *-kos, *-ḱos; for sense development, compare Ancient Greek λέπας (lépas, “rock”) which gave λεπάς (lepás, “limpet”). First attestations referred to the goose, with corresponding folklore (q.v.).
To connect with or attach.
To press close against something.
Where this word comes from
Uncertain, with long-debated origin. From Middle English barnakille, from earlier bernake, bernekke, most likely from Old Northern French bernaque (“barnacle”) (compare French barnache), probably from Medieval Latin barneca (“limpet”), probably from Gaulish (compare Welsh brennig, Irish bairneach), from Proto-Celtic *barannīkos, from *barinā (“rock, rocky ground”) (compare Old Irish barenn (“boulder”)), from Proto-Indo-European *gʷr̥H- (“hill, mountain”) + Proto-Celtic *-ākos, from Proto-Indo-European *-kos, *-ḱos; for sense development, compare Ancient Greek λέπας (lépas, “rock”) which gave λεπάς (lepás, “limpet”). First attestations referred to the goose, with corresponding folklore (q.v.).
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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.