Antonyms for barren
ˈbær ənbar·ren

WiktionaryRate these synonyms:3.0 / 3 votes

1. barrenadjective

   Antonyms:
   fertile, fruitful

   Synonyms:
   sterile

2. barrenadjective

   unable to bear children; sterile

   The pine barrens are a site lonely enough to suit any hermit.

   Antonyms:
   fruitful, fertile

   Synonyms:
   sterile

3. barrenadjective

   of poor fertility, infertile

   Antonyms:
   fertile, fruitful

   Synonyms:
   sterile

4. barrenadjective

   bleak

   Antonyms:
   fruitful, fertile

   Synonyms:
   sterile

5. barrenadjective

   not productive

   Synonyms:
   sterile

   Antonyms:
   fertile, fruitful

Princeton's WordNetRate these antonyms:0.0 / 0 votes

1. barren, waste, wastelandadjective

   an uninhabited wilderness that is worthless for cultivation

   "the barrens of central Africa"; "the trackless wastes of the desert"

   Antonyms:
   existent, existing, fertile, hospitable

   Synonyms:
   waste product, waste, thriftlessness, permissive waste, wastefulness, waste matter, dissipation, waste material, wasteland

2. bare, barren, bleak, desolate, starkadjective

   providing no shelter or sustenance

   "bare rocky hills"; "barren lands"; "the bleak treeless regions of the high Andes"; "the desolate surface of the moon"; "a stark landscape"

   Antonyms:
   fertile, existent, existing, hospitable

   Synonyms:
   spare, bare(a), devoid, perfect(a), consummate(a), blunt, unornamented, austere, au naturel(p), bare, raw, marginal, arrant(a), black, severe, gross(a), staring(a), simple(a), stripped, desolate, destitute, mere(a), cutting, everlasting(a), double-dyed(a), crude(a), dim, complete(a), innocent, plain, nude, unsheathed, pure(a), unfinished, stark(a), unadulterated, thoroughgoing(a), free, naked, bleak, unembellished, sodding(a), scanty, stark, utter(a), stern

3. barrenadjective

   not bearing offspring

   "a barren woman"; "learned early in his marriage that he was sterile"

   Antonyms:
   existing, existent, hospitable, fertile

   Synonyms:
   stark, bare, free, innocent, destitute, desolate, devoid, bleak

4. barren, destitute, devoid, free, innocentadjective

   completely wanting or lacking

   "writing barren of insight"; "young recruits destitute of experience"; "innocent of literary merit"; "the sentence was devoid of meaning"

   Antonyms:
   existent, hospitable, fertile, existing

   Synonyms:
   guiltless, gratis(p), ingenuous, innocuous, indigent, needy, impeccant, complimentary, destitute, loose, costless, liberal, free, stark, unacquainted(p), desolate, gratuitous, clean-handed, impoverished, detached, spare, innocent(p), innocent, poverty-stricken, sinless, devoid, bleak, bare, necessitous

Synonyms, Antonyms & Associated WordsRate these synonyms:4.0 / 1 vote

1. barrenadjective

   Antonyms:
   prolific, fecund, virile, fruitful, fertile, teeming

   Synonyms:
   sterile, agenestic, infecund, unprolific, unprocreant, unproductive, unfruitful, unfertile, effete, desert, unprofitable, fruitless, unremunerative, empty, stupid, dull, unimaginative, prosaic, devoid, uninspiring, uninteresting

How to use barren in a sentence?

1. Peggy Noonan, special assistant and speech writer to Reagan, 1984-88:

   The battle for the mind of Ronald Reagan was like the trench warfare of World War I: never have so many fought so hard for such barren terrain.

2. Paul Brooks, The Pursuit of Wilderness (1971):

   We shall never understand the natural environment until we see it as a living organism. Land can be healthy or sick, fertile or barren, rich or poor, lovingly nurtured or bled white. Our present attitudes and laws governing the ownership and use of land represent an abuse of the concept of private property.... Today you can murder land for private profit. You can leave the corpse for all to see and nobody calls the cops.

3. Alien Life -RSB- Raymond:

   If you've been there or seen pictures, you know how barren that landscape is, in terms of fundamental nutrient availability of carbon and nitrogen, these things are tough to get your hands on when you're in a biological soil crust.

4. Nirmala Sitharaman:

   A scheme to enable farmers to set up solar power generation capacity on their barren/fallow lands and to sell it to the grid would be operationalized.

5. Aparna Roy:

   We lost huge amounts of our agriculture land, which is lain barren, useless. We lost a lot of our hospital buildings which stopped functioning during the pandemic because of the damage done from flooding after the cyclone struck. Roads, connectivity, transportation, everything was damaged.

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