Word Confusion: Baron versus Barren

Feminine: baroness

Plural: barons, baronesses

Plural for the noun: barrens

• A member of a foreign nobility having a rank similar to that of a baron
• [Historical] A feudal vassal holding his lands under a direct grant from the king
  • A direct descendant of such a vassal or his equal in the nobility
• A member of the House of Lords

[With modifier] An important or powerful person in a specified business or industry

[British] A joint of beef consisting of two sirloins joined at the backbone ²

• [Of a tree or plant] Not producing fruit or seed
• Showing no results or achievements
• Unproductive
• [Archaic; of a woman] Unable to have children
• [Of a female animal] Not pregnant or unable to become so

[Of a place or building] Bleak and lifeless

• Empty of meaning or value
• [barren of] Devoid of

Noun:
[Chiefly North American; usually barrens] Level or slightly rolling land, usually with a sandy soil and few trees, and relatively infertile

One does not address a baron as Baron Willoughby, but as Lord Willoughby.

William I introduced the rank of baron in England to distinguish those men who had pledged their loyalty to him under the feudal system.

To sit in the House of Lords, one must be at least a baron or baroness.

The committee of Twenty Five were a group of barons in the forefront of the opposition to King John who were entrusted by the terms of clause 61 of Magna Carta to ensure the king’s compliance with its terms (Saul).

Baroness Orczy wrote The Scarlet Pimpernel. And you should read it!

William Randolph Hearst was a press baron.

John D. Rockefeller and J. Paul Getty were two early oil barons.

A baron of beef is sirloin while a steamship round is the round area of the cow.

A baron of beef weighs some 100 to 200 pounds and must be special ordered from a butcher.

Most of the trees in the orchard are barren.

Much of philosophy has been barren.

King Henry VIII thought his queens were barren.

She’s barren and no longer produces milk.

The sports hall turned out to be a rather barren concrete building.

Those young heads were stuffed with barren facts.

The room was barren of furniture.

Noun:
Crossing the barrens was no easy feat.

The Pine Barrens, also known as the Pinelands or simply the Pines, is a heavily forested area of coastal plain stretching across more than seven counties of New Jersey.

Originally an extensive pine barrens, the Forest Service set aside this mile-square area in the early 1930s as a research site to study natural succession on sandy and sandy loam soils in the absence of fire.

1. Middle English from the Old French, which is from the medieval Latin baro, baron- meaning man, warrior, and is probably of Germanic origin.
2. It was first recorded in 1745-55.