barren

barren
    adj 1: providing no shelter or sustenance; "bare rocky hills";
           "barren lands"; "the bleak treeless regions of the high
           Andes"; "the desolate surface of the moon"; "a stark
           landscape" [syn: {bare}, {barren}, {bleak}, {desolate},
           {stark}]
    2: not bearing offspring; "a barren woman"; "learned early in
       his marriage that he was sterile"
    3: completely wanting or lacking; "writing barren of insight";
       "young recruits destitute of experience"; "innocent of
       literary merit"; "the sentence was devoid of meaning" [syn:
       {barren}, {destitute}, {devoid}, {free}, {innocent}]
    n 1: an uninhabited wilderness that is worthless for
         cultivation; "the barrens of central Africa"; "the
         trackless wastes of the desert" [syn: {barren}, {waste},
         {wasteland}]
    

Barren \Bar"ren\ (b[a^]r"ren), a. [OE. barein, OF. brehaing,
   fem. brehaigne, baraigne, F. br['e]haigne; of uncertain
   origin; cf. Arm. br['e]kha[~n], markha[~n], sterile; LL.
   brana a sterile mare, principally in Aquitanian and Spanish
   documents; Bisc. barau, baru, fasting.]
   1. Incapable of producing offspring; producing no young;
      sterile; -- said of women and female animals.
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            She was barren of children.           --Bp. Hall.
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   2. Not producing vegetation, or useful vegetation; sterile.
      "Barren mountain tracts." --Macaulay.
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   3. Unproductive; fruitless; unprofitable; empty.
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            Brilliant but barren reveries.        --Prescott.
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            Some schemes will appear barren of hints and matter.
                                                  --Swift.
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   4. Mentally dull; stupid. --Shak.
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   {Barren flower}, a flower which has only stamens without a
      pistil, or which has neither stamens nor pistils.

   {Barren Grounds} (Geog.), a vast tract in British America
      northward of the forest regions.

   {Barren Ground bear} (Zool.), a peculiar bear, inhabiting the
      Barren Grounds, now believed to be a variety of the brown
      bear of Europe.

   {Barren Ground caribou} (Zool.), a small reindeer ({Rangifer
      Gr[oe]nlandicus}) peculiar to the Barren Grounds and
      Greenland.
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Barren \Bar"ren\, n.
   1. A tract of barren land.
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   2. pl. Elevated lands or plains on which grow small trees,
      but not timber; as, pine barrens; oak barrens. They are
      not necessarily sterile, and are often fertile. [Amer.]
      --J. Pickering.
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Barren
For a woman to be barren was accounted a severe punishment among
the Jews (Gen. 16:2; 30:1-23; 1 Sam. 1:6, 27; Isa. 47:9; 49:21;
Luke 1:25). Instances of barrenness are noticed (Gen. 11:30;
25:21; 29:31; Judg. 13:2, 3; Luke 1:7, 36).
    

Barren -- U.S. County in Kentucky
   Population (2000):    38033
   Housing Units (2000): 17095
   Land area (2000):     490.973907 sq. miles (1271.616528 sq. km)
   Water area (2000):    8.955255 sq. miles (23.194002 sq. km)
   Total area (2000):    499.929162 sq. miles (1294.810530 sq. km)
   Located within:       Kentucky (KY), FIPS 21
   Location:             36.984455 N, 85.933483 W
   Headwords:
    Barren
    Barren, KY
    Barren County
    Barren County, KY
    

160 Moby Thesaurus words for "barren":
      abortive, acarpous, arid, bare, blah, bland, blank, bleached,
      bleak, bloodless, bootless, celibate, characterless, childless,
      clear, cold, colorless, counterproductive, dead, depleted, desert,
      desolate, devoid, dismal, draggy, drained, drearisome, dreary,
      dried-up, dry, dryasdust, dull, dusty, earthbound, effete,
      elephantine, empty, etiolated, exhausted, fade, fallow, fatuitous,
      fatuous, featureless, feckless, flat, fruitless, futile, gainless,
      gaunt, gelded, heavy, ho-hum, hollow, impotent, impoverished,
      inadequate, inane, ineffective, ineffectual, inefficacious,
      inexcitable, infecund, infertile, inoperative, insipid, invalid,
      irreclaimable, issueless, jejune, leached, leaden, lifeless,
      literal, low-spirited, menopausal, mundane, nonfertile,
      nonproducing, nonproductive, nonprolific, nonremunerative,
      nugacious, nugatory, null, null and void, of no force, otiose,
      pale, pallid, parched, pedestrian, plodding, pointless, poky,
      ponderous, poor, profitless, prosaic, prosing, prosy, rewardless,
      sine prole, slow, solemn, spiritless, staid, sterile, stiff,
      stodgy, stolid, stuffy, sucked dry, superficial, tasteless,
      tedious, teemless, unavailing, uncultivable, uncultivated,
      unfanciful, unfertile, unfruitful, unideal, unimaginative,
      uninspired, uninventive, unlively, unoriginal, unplowed, unpoetic,
      unproductive, unprofitable, unprolific, unrelieved, unremunerative,
      unrewarding, unromantic, unromanticized, unsown, untilled, useless,
      vacant, vacuous, vain, vapid, virgin, void, waste, wasted,
      wasteland, white, wild, wilderness, wildness, with nothing inside,
      without content, without issue, wooden, worn-out