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any marine crustacean of the subclass Cirripedia, usually having a calcareous shell, being either stalked (goose barnacle) and attaching itself to ship bottoms and floating timber, or stalkless (rock barnacle or acorn barnacle) and attaching itself to rocks, especially in the intertidal zone.
a person or thing that clings tenaciously.
Historical Examples

Then Mart gripped the kris, tore it from the barnacled wood, and whipped around to meet his enemy.
The Pirate Shark Elliott Whitney

Picking his way over the barnacled rocks he started for the beach.
El Diablo Brayton Norton

I have forgotten to say that we found the barnacled cask nearly filled with a most delicious wine which none of us can name.
The Mutiny of the Elsinore Jack London

The rumble and roar bored itself into a remote corner of my brain while I watched that barnacled hulk and concentrated.
Cue for Quiet Thomas L. Sherred

“Got to have somethin’ to keep me from gettin’ barnacled,” declared Captain Lote.
The Portygee Joseph Crosby Lincoln

Others went along the Costa Rican coast to find turtle to salt for victuals, and to careen their barnacled and wormy ships.
On the Spanish Main John Masefield

For though handsome lads, they were all (in the Scots phrase) barnacled.
The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson – Swanston Edition Robert Louis Stevenson

The swell was breaking white against its barnacled granite boulders in a long, crashing rumble.
Jim Spurling, Fisherman Albert Walter Tolman

With her eyes still held by the barnacled rocks, she snapped: “Then you may see something.”
El Diablo Brayton Norton

How was it that these brown savages were free, and he barnacled to a slab-sided bark?
Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas Lloyd Osbourne

noun
any of various marine crustaceans of the subclass Cirripedia that, as adults, live attached to rocks, ship bottoms, etc. They have feathery food-catching cirri protruding from a hard shell See acorn barnacle, goose barnacle
a person or thing that is difficult to get rid of
n.

early 13c., “species of wild goose;” as a type of “shellfish,” first recorded 1580s. Often derived from a Celtic source (cf. Breton bernik, a kind of shellfish), but the application to the goose predates that of the shellfish in English. The goose nests in the Arctic in summer and returns to Europe in the winter, hence the mystery surrounding its reproduction. It was believed in ancient superstition to hatch from barnacle’s shell, possibly because the crustacean’s feathery stalks resemble goose down. The scientific name of the crustacean, Cirripedes, is from Greek cirri “curls of hair” + pedes “feet.”
barnacle
(bär’nə-kəl)
Any of various small marine crustaceans of the subclass Cirripedia that form a hard shell in the adult stage and attach themselves to underwater surfaces, such as rocks, the bottoms of ships, and the skin of whales.