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a building for storing hay, grain, etc., and often for housing livestock.
a very large garage for buses, trucks, etc.; carbarn.
to store (hay, grain, etc.) in a barn.
Historical Examples

Arrived at the barnlike station, the porters—two Bhootea women, carried our luggage up to Woodland’s Hotel.
Forty Thousand Miles Over Land and Water Lady (Ethel Gwendoline [Moffatt]) Vincent

Its exhibits were simple, the buildings that housed them fantastic and barnlike.
The Personality of American Cities Edward Hungerford

This is a long fur-edged garment, very warm and pleasant in winter when the castle is a barnlike place.
Life on a Mediaeval Barony William Stearns Davis

Gwynette had not liked the room when she first arrived, as it was, she declared, too “barnlike” in its barrenness.
Sisters Grace May North

For it was before the day that those two mammoth and barnlike terminals, the North and the South stations, had been built.
The Personality of American Cities Edward Hungerford

The room, on the upper floor just opposite the hall where we have the chorus rehearsals, is large and barnlike.
An American Girl in Munich Mabel W. Daniels

They appeared together in the church, a barnlike edifice, with great galleries half-way between the floor and the roof.
Little Rivers Henry van Dyke

Just dairy sounds so milky and barnlike; and I don’t like ‘sunbeam book’ real well, either.
The Lilac Lady Ruth Alberta Brown

The walls were unplastered and the rafters unceiled; the whole bearing a most barnlike and unhospitable appearance.
The Outlaw of Torn Edgar Rice Burroughs

In the wide, barnlike foyer of the building, a vertigo of stage fright obsessed him.
The Tempering Charles Neville Buck

noun
a large farm outbuilding, used chiefly for storing hay, grain, etc, but also for housing livestock
(US & Canadian) a large shed for sheltering railroad cars, trucks, etc
any large building, esp an unattractive one
(modifier) relating to a system of poultry farming in which birds are allowed to move freely within a barn: barn eggs
noun
a unit of nuclear cross section equal to 10–28 square metre b
n.

Old English bereærn “barn,” literally “barley house,” from bere “barley” (see barley) + aern “house,” metathesized from *rann, *rasn (cf. Old Norse rann, Gothic razn “house,” Old English rest “resting place;” sealtærn “saltworks”).

Barley was not always the only crop grown as the data recovered at Bishopstone might suggest but it is always the most commonly represented, followed by wheat and then rye and oats. [C.J. Arnold, “An Archaeology of the Early Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms,” 1988, p.36]

Another word for “barn” in Old English was beretun, “barley enclosure” (from tun “enclosure, house”), which accounts for the many Barton place names on the English map, and the common surname. Barn door used figuratively for “broad target” and “great size” since 1540s.

Related Terms

someone can’t hit the side of a barn

a storehouse (Deut. 28:8; Job 39:12; Hag. 2:19) for grain, which was usually under ground, although also sometimes above ground (Luke 12:18).

see:

can’t hit the broad side of a barn
lock the barn door after the horse is stolen