barrier

Pluralbarriers

Formsbarriers, barriering, barriered

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A structure built to block the way and prevent passage from one side to the other.

   Police set up a barrier across the road to redirect traffic.

   Concrete barriers lined both sides of the highway.

   Similarbarricade, roadblock, fence, blockade

   Note

   The literal sense, and the one the word's history explains: Middle English barrere, from Old French barriere, built on barre, "bar". A barrier was first a thing of bars set across a way. It still sits naturally beside places where passage is controlled, such as a railway barrier or a barrier at a checkpoint. The figurative uses, beginning with an obstacle to progress, grow out of this physical stop.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   An obstacle or impediment that stands in the way of progress or makes something difficult to achieve.

   Language can be a serious barrier when you move to a new country.

   The company worked to remove the barriers facing disabled employees.

   Similarobstacle, hurdle, impediment, hindrance, obstruction

3. 3
   nouncountable

   A boundary or limit that separates one thing from another or marks how far something can extend.

   The plane finally broke the sound barrier over the desert.

   Scientists pushed past the barrier of what was once thought possible.

   Similarlimit, boundary, threshold

   Note

   Here the barrier is a line to be crossed rather than a wall to be removed, and its favorite verb is break: few runners break the three-hour time barrier. A measure often stands in front of it, as in a time barrier or the $4-a-day poverty barrier of The Economist (2013). When the sense turns abstract, writers erect such barriers instead, as Charles Hugh Smith does between the real world and the normalized one.

4. 4
   verbtransitive

   To block or obstruct a route or opening by placing a structure across it.

   Officials barrier the bridge whenever flooding threatens the town.

   Volunteers barriered the road to protect the marathon runners.

   Similarbar

   Note

   The verb brings the word back toward its root. Its closest synonym is bar, the Old French barre that barrier was built on. It is regular, with the forms barriers, barriering and barriered, and the final r is never doubled. It always takes an object, the road, bridge or opening being closed off.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   A separation between two areas of the body where specialized cells admit certain substances while preventing the entry of others.

   Like a customs checkpoint that admits some goods and turns others back.

   The barrier surrounding the brain admits oxygen and glucose while excluding many toxins.

   Specialized cells form a barrier that selectively controls what enters the tissue.

   Note

   Physiology uses the word for a filter rather than a wall. Specialized cells, sealed together by tight junctions, let some molecules through and turn others away. The best-known case is the blood-brain barrier, and its name shows the usual pattern: the two compartments being divided come first, joined by a hyphen, before the word barrier.

6. 6
   nouncountable

   In government and binding theory, a node that intervenes between two others when it can potentially govern the lower node, c-commands it, and does not c-command the higher one.

   Whether a phrase counts as a barrier determines if government can reach the lower node.

   The analysis hinges on identifying which maximal projection acts as a barrier.

   Note

   Linguistics borrowed the everyday picture of a stop on a path: a barrier is what keeps government from reaching across it. The notion is relational rather than a fixed property. A node counts as a barrier only with respect to a particular pair, A and B, so the same node can block one relation and leave another untouched. Its job is to mark off the local domain within which government operates.

7. 7
   nounhistoricalcountable

   The enclosed ground within which combatants fought at a medieval tournament.

   The herald announced each knight as he entered the barrier.

   Spectators crowded the rails around the barrier to watch the joust.

   Note

   A word for the railed enclosure of the tournament field, and one that belongs to historical writing rather than modern use. It names the same ground as the lists. The railings explain the choice, since the structural sense began as a thing of bars. Keep it for descriptions of the tournament itself; the fighting done across a rail is the foot-combat exercise.

8. 8
   nounhistoricalcountableplural

   A martial exercise of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in which combatants fought on foot across a low rail.

   The court held a barrier in honor of the visiting prince.

   Knights tested their skill at the barrier before the evening feast.

   Note

   Where the tournament enclosure is a place, this barrier is an event: combatants on foot struck at each other across a waist-high rail, as both training and courtly spectacle. In this use the word usually appears in the plural, the barriers. Like the tournament lists, it belongs to historical description rather than present-day speech.

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