BARLEY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does barley mean? 

• BARLEY (noun)
  The noun BARLEY has 2 senses:

1. a grain of barley

2. cultivated since prehistoric times; grown for forage and grain

  Familiarity information: BARLEY used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• BARLEY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A grain of barley

Classified under:

Nouns denoting foods and drinks

Synonyms:

barley; barleycorn

Hypernyms ("barley" is a kind of...):

cereal; food grain; grain (foodstuff prepared from the starchy grains of cereal grasses)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "barley"):

pearl barley (barley ground into small round pellets)

Holonyms ("barley" is a part of...):

common barley; Hordeum vulgare (grass yielding grain used for breakfast food and animal feed and in malt beverages)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Cultivated since prehistoric times; grown for forage and grain

Classified under:

Nouns denoting plants

Hypernyms ("barley" is a kind of...):

cereal; cereal grass (grass whose starchy grains are used as food: wheat; rice; rye; oats; maize; buckwheat; millet)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "barley"):

common barley; Hordeum vulgare (grass yielding grain used for breakfast food and animal feed and in malt beverages)

barley grass; Hordeum murinum; wall barley (European annual grass often found as a weed in waste ground especially along roadsides and hedgerows)

foxtail barley; Hordeum jubatum; squirreltail barley; squirreltail grass (barley grown for its highly ornamental flower heads with delicate long silky awns; North America and northeastern Asia)

Hordeum pusillum; little barley (annual barley native to western North America and widespread in southern United States and tropical America)

Holonyms ("barley" is a member of...):

genus Hordeum; Hordeum (annual to perennial grasses of temperate northern hemisphere and South America: barley)

 Context examples 

I fell into a high road, for so I took it to be, though it served to the inhabitants only as a foot-path through a field of barley.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

A naturally occurring dicarboxylic acid produced by Malassezia furfur and found in whole grain cereals, rye, barley and animal products.

(Azelaic Acid, NCI Thesaurus)

A digestive disease that is caused by an immune response to a protein called gluten, which is found in wheat, rye, barley, and oats.

(Celiac Disease, NCI Dictionary)

A human nutrition study reaffirms the health benefits of substituting refined-grain products like white bread with whole-grain foods like whole-wheat bread, oatmeal, barley, rye, and brown or wild rice.

(Whole Grains Deliver on Health Benefits, U.S. Department of Agriculture)

This is consistent with the agricultural intensification process that is known to have occurred, due to the cultivation of cereals, particularly barley.

(Analysis of the Palaeolithic diet finds that, in the prehistoric age, for thousands of years there were no social divisions in food consumption, University of Granada)

Gluten is a protein found in wheat, rye, and barley.

(Celiac Disease, NIH: National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases)

An alcoholic beverage usually made from malted cereal grain (as barley), flavored with hops, and brewed by slow fermentation.

(Beer, NCI Thesaurus)

India grows a variety of coarse grains — including sorghum, pearl millet, maize, barley, and finger millet — as well as many ‘small millets’ such as kodo millet, little millet, foxtail millet, proso millet, and barnyard millet.

(Course grains better than rice for health, environment, SciDev.Net)

The analysis of the diet through the isotopes contained in the bone remains has shown that, despite the proximity of the Mediterranean, the diet of these populations was based almost exclusively on animal proteins (meat and derivatives) and on vegetables (especially wheat and barley), but not fish.

(The necropolis of El Barranquete in Níjar (Almería), proven to have been used for funerary rituals throughout the Bronze Age, University of Granada)