Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A barn for cows.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A cow-house.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun N. of Eng. & Scot. A cow house.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun chiefly UK a
barn , especially one used for keepingcattle
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a barn for cows
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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His farm, little more than a few fields with a house and a byre, is down a track that no-one walks but Jack.
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In the byre we sat, the heathen and me -- for we were but simple men in this affair -- and the byre was a dark place to be sitting, and in a while old Betty came, havering at hens and talking to herself.
The McBrides A Romance of Arran John Sillars
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a cow's head looking over its biss, and it struck me that the byre was the handy place to get at in Loch Ranza.
The McBrides A Romance of Arran John Sillars
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I took the plastic tablecloth off my “raised bed” – under which it had spent the winter – and was so struck by the lovely softness of the soil that I confected a second bed with odds and ends of wood from the byre.
Jean's Knitting Jean 2009
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He loves the warmth and passes the afternoons in a suntrap in the lee of the byre.
Spring's here: skylarks overhead, moles in the garden, moths in the bathroom 2011
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Then we formed a chain gang to stack it all up in the byre.
Jean's Knitting Jean 2009
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There were bone tools and spindle whorls carved by hand, occasionally bits of cloth, the single partition in Eirik the Reds byre that was actually made of a whales shoulder blade, all illustrating the settlers daily experience and industry as no broad survey could.
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I took the plastic tablecloth off my “raised bed” – under which it had spent the winter – and was so struck by the lovely softness of the soil that I confected a second bed with odds and ends of wood from the byre.
Archive 2009-04-01 Jean 2009
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Then we formed a chain gang to stack it all up in the byre.
Archive 2009-08-01 Jean 2009
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There is no byre attached so perhaps the weaver sold cloth in return for food rather than raise cropsand cattle for a living.
Country diary: Newtonmore Ray Collier 2010
asativum commented on the word byre
"When Enkidu was thrown, he said to Gilgamesh, 'There is not another like you in the world. Ninsun, who is as strong as a wild ox in the byre, she was the mother who bore you, and now you are raised above all me, and Enlil has given you the kingship, for your strength surpasses the strength of men.'"
-- The Coming of Enkidu, from The Epic of Gilgamesh
June 17, 2008
TankHughes commented on the word byre
"Where you put the cows." - Erin McKean
May 29, 2015