Word.ws English Dictionary

barchans

barchans is the plural of barchan.

Meaning of barchan

Noun

barchan (plural barchans)

  1. (also, attributive) An arc-shaped shifting sand dune comprising well-sorted (uniformly sized) sand.
    • The sand is usually very well sorted in barchans, for it is constantly re-worked as the dune 'marches'. The marching also causes cross-bedding inside the barchan, with a dip parallel to the sand-fall face.1966, E[dwin] S[herbon] Hills, C[liff] D. Ollier, C[harles] R[owland] Twidale, “Geomorphology”, in E. S. Hills, editor, Arid Lands: A Geographical Appraisal (Routledge Revivals), New York, N.Y....

Questions about barchans

What is barchans the plural of?
Barchans is the plural of barchan.

Words near barchans in the dictionary

  1. Barch
  2. barchan
  3. barchane
  4. barchanes
  5. barchanoid
  6. barchans
  7. barchart
  8. barcharts
  9. barches
  10. Barcheston
  11. Barcia

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: barchans (page history and authors); barchan (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.

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