Word.ws English Dictionary

Barbara

Syllables: Bar·ba·ra/ˈbɑːb(ə)ɹə/US/ˈbɑɹb(ə)ɹə/

Barbara proper noun: a female given name from Latin.

Proper noun

Barbara (plural Barbaras)

  1. A female given name from Latin.
    • My mother had a maid call'd Barbara; / She was in love, and he she lov'd prov'd mad / And did forsake her; […]Scene 3
    • All in the merrye month of May / When greene buds they were swellin / Yong Jemmye Grove on his death-bed lay / For love of Barbara Allen.17th century or before: English folk song: Barbara Allen: 1839 version by Thomas Percy
  2. A syllogism in which all three propositions are of the form "All X are Y" or "X is a Y".
    • If you see a girl you like, prove it to her by Barbara and Celarent all the way to Fresison or whatever the logician's Omega is — I forget.

Barbara meaning in Arabic

Barbara in Arabic

cognates and transliterations of female given name
بَرْبَارَة barbāra

Examples of Barbara in a sentence

  • What a mouthful they all are!" Barbara contracted her eyebrows.1860, Mrs Henry Wood (Ellen Wood), East Lynne, Kessinger Publishing, published 2004, →ISBN, page 29:
  • "Everybody in the next generation," suggested Dick, "will be named Peter or Barbara - because at present all piquant literary characters are named Peter or Barbara."1922, F[rancis] Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC, (please specify |book=1, 2, or...
  • Among Soloway’s congregants injured in the attack was Barbara Steinmetz, an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor who has become one of the most poignant symbols of the attack.2025 June 5, Grace Gilson, “Boulder’s ‘shocked and traumatized’ Jewish community takes stock of losses and strengths”, in The Times of...

Forms of Barbara

pluralBarbaras
alternative formBarbra

Origin of Barbara

* From Latin Barbara, the name of Saint Barbara, feminine form of barbarus, from Ancient Greek βάρβαρος (bárbaros, “strange, foreign”). Doublet of Varvara. * (logic): From the given name; chosen because it has three A's in it representing universal affirmatives.

Words formed from Barbara

Phrases with Barbara

Questions about Barbara

What does Barbara mean?
Barbara means a female given name from Latin.
What is Barbara in Arabic?
Barbara in Arabic is بَرْبَارَة (barbāra). See Barbara meaning in Arabic.
How do you use Barbara in a sentence?
What a mouthful they all are!" Barbara contracted her eyebrows.
What part of speech is Barbara?
Barbara is a proper noun.
How do you pronounce Barbara?
Barbara is pronounced /ˈbɑɹb(ə)ɹə/ (US).

Words near Barbara in the dictionary

  1. barbaloin
  2. barbamide
  3. barbamides
  4. Barban
  5. Barbar
  6. Barbara
  7. Barbara's buttons
  8. barbaralalia
  9. barbaralane
  10. barbaralanes
  11. barbaralyl

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Barbara (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-Barbara.wav.

Cite this entry: “Barbara.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/barbara. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.