bar

Meanings

Noun

• A solid, more or less rigid object of metal or wood with a uniform cross-section smaller than its length.
• A solid metal object with uniform (round, square, hexagonal, octagonal or rectangular) cross-section; in the US its smallest dimension is inch or greater, a piece of thinner material being called a strip.
• A cuboid piece of any solid commodity.
• A broad shaft, band, or stripe.
• A long, narrow drawn or printed rectangle, cuboid or cylinder, especially as used in a bar code or a bar chart.
• Any of various lines used as punctuation or diacritics, such as the pipe ⟨⟩, fraction bar (as in 12), and strikethrough (as in Ⱥ), formerly including oblique marks such as the slash.
• The sign indicating that the characteristic of a logarithm is negative, conventionally placed above the digit(s) to show that it applies to the characteristic only and not to the mantissa.
• A similar sign indicating that the charge on a particle is the negative of its usual value (and that consequently the particle is in fact an antiparticle).
• A business selling alcoholic drinks for consumption on the premises, or the premises themselves; a public house.
• The counter of such premises, sometimes called a wet bar.
• A counter, or simply a cabinet, from which alcoholic drinks are served in a private house or a hotel room.
• Premises or a counter serving any type of beverage.
• An establishment where alcohol and sometimes other refreshments are served.
• An informal establishment selling food to be consumed on the premises.
• An establishment offering cosmetic services.
• An official order or pronouncement that prohibits some activity.
• Anything that obstructs, hinders, or prevents; an obstruction; a barrier.
• A metasyntactic variable representing an unspecified entity, often the second in a series, following foo.
• A dividing line (physical or notional) in the chamber of a legislature beyond which only members and officials may pass.
• The railing surrounding the part of a courtroom in which the judges, lawyers, defendants and witnesses stay.
• The bar exam, the legal licensing exam.
• Collectively, lawyers or the legal profession; specifically applied to barristers in some countries, but including all lawyers in others.
• One of an array of bar-shaped symbols that display the level of something, such as wireless signal strength or battery life remaining.
• A vertical line across a musical staff dividing written music into sections, typically of equal durational value.
• One of those musical sections.
• A horizontal pole that must be crossed in the high jump and pole vault.
• Any level of achievement regarded as a challenge to be overcome.
• The crossbar.
• The central divider between the inner and outer table of a backgammon board, where stones are placed if they are hit.
• An addition to a military medal, on account of a subsequent act.
• A linear shoaling landform feature within a body of water.
• A ridge or succession of ridges of sand or other substance, especially a formation extending across the mouth of a river or harbor or off a beach, and which may obstruct navigation. (FM 55-501).
• One of the ordinaries in heraldry; a diminutive of a fess.
• A city gate, in some British place names.
• A drilling or tamping rod.
• A vein or dike crossing a lode.
• A gatehouse of a castle or fortified town.
• The part of the crust of a horse's hoof which is bent inwards towards the frog at the heel on each side, and extends into the centre of the sole.
• The space between the tusks and grinders in the upper jaw of a horse, in which the bit is placed.
• A non-SI unit of pressure equal to 100,000 pascals, approximately equal to atmospheric pressure at sea level.

Verb

• To obstruct the passage of (someone or something).
• To prohibit.
• To lock or bolt with a bar.
• To imprint or paint with bars, to stripe.

Related

Similar words

• block, hinder, obstruct
• ban, interdict, prohibit
• ㍴

Origin

• From Middle English barre, from Old French barre, from Vulgar Latin *barra, of uncertain origin. barre.
• From Middle English barren, from Old French barrer, from Medieval Latin barrare ("to bar"), from the noun. Cognate Occitan barrar, Spanish barrar, Portuguese barrar.
• Preposition properly imperative of the verb. Compare barring.
• Borrowed from Ancient Greek βάρος, coined circa 1900.