bar
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
3 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "bar", 3-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "bar" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "bar" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
bar is aEnglishnoun. It means: A solid, more or less rigid object of metal or wood with a uniform cross-section smaller than its length. Pronounced /bɑː/. It ranks #1,213 in English word frequency. Often confused with be and by.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | bar |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /bɑː/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #1,213 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for bar is 3 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /bɑː/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,213 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 41 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for bar in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "be", "by", "BC", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English barre, from Old French barre (“beam, bar, gate, barrier”), from Vulgar Latin *barra, of uncertain origin. Doublet of barre. Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is bar, spelled B-A-R, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A solid, more or less rigid object of metal or wood with a uniform cross-section smaller than its length.
- 2A solid metal object with uniform (round, square, hexagonal, octagonal or rectangular) cross-section; in the US its smallest dimension is ¹⁄₄ inch or greater, a piece of thinner material being called a strip.
- 3A cuboid piece of any solid commodity.
- 4A broad shaft, band, or stripe.
- 5A long, narrow drawn or printed rectangle, cuboid or cylinder, especially as used in a bar code or a bar chart.
- 6Any of various lines used as punctuation or diacritics, such as the pipe ⟨|⟩, fraction bar (as in 12), and strikethrough (as in Ⱥ), formerly (obsolete) including oblique marks such as the slash.
- 7The 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.
- 8A 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).
- 9A business selling alcoholic drinks for consumption on the premises, or the premises themselves; a public house.
- 10The counter of such premises.
- 11A counter, or simply a cabinet, from which alcoholic drinks are served in a private house or a hotel room.
- 12Premises or a counter serving any type of beverage.
- 13An informal establishment selling food to be consumed on the premises.
- 14An establishment offering cosmetic services.
- 15An official order or pronouncement that prohibits some activity.
- 16Anything that obstructs, hinders, or prevents; an obstruction; a barrier.
- 17A metasyntactic variable representing an unspecified entity, often the second in a series, following foo.
- 18A dividing line (physical or notional) in the chamber of a legislature beyond which only members and officials may pass.
- 19The railing surrounding the part of a courtroom in which the judges, lawyers, defendants and witnesses stay.
- 20The bar exam, the legal licensing exam.
- 21Collectively, lawyers or the legal profession; specifically applied to barristers in some countries, but including all lawyers in others.
- 22One of an array of bar-shaped symbols that display the level of something, such as wireless signal strength or battery life remaining.
- 23A vertical line across a musical staff dividing written music into sections, typically of equal durational value.
- 24One of those musical sections.
- 25One of those musical sections.
- 26A horizontal pole that must be crossed in the high jump and pole vault.
- 27Any level of achievement regarded as a challenge to be overcome; a standard or expectation.
- 28The crossbar.
- 29The central divider between the inner and outer table of a backgammon board, where stones are placed if they are hit.
- 30An addition to a military medal, on account of a subsequent act.
- 31A ridge or succession of ridges of sand or other substance; especially
- 32A ridge or succession of ridges of sand or other substance; especially:
- 33One of the ordinaries in heraldry; a diminutive of a fess.
- 34A city gate, in some British place names.
- 35A drilling or tamping rod.
- 36A vein or dike crossing a lode.
- 37A gatehouse of a castle or fortified town.
- 38The 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.
- 39The space between the tusks and grinders in the upper jaw of a horse, in which the bit is placed.
- 40A measure of drugs, typically one ounce.
- 41A small, tablet-shaped dose of Xanax, typically containing two milligrams and able to be split into quarters.
Etymology
From Middle English barre, from Old French barre (“beam, bar, gate, barrier”), from Vulgar Latin *barra, of uncertain origin. Doublet of barre.
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #1,213 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter B in our English index: