Word.ws English Dictionary

barling

barling noun: the smallest pig in a litter; runt.

Noun (1)

barling (plural barlings)

  1. (UK, dialectal) The smallest pig in a litter; runt.

Noun (2)

barling (plural barlings)

  1. (Scotland, UK, dialectal, rare) A pole; (carpentry) the cross rafter of a roof.
    • A tripod can be formed of three hop poles or barlings. The former can be laid in depths up to 2^ metres and the latter in depths up to about 5 metres at low water if the tidal range does not exceed about 3 metres.1970, Admiralty Manual of Hydrographic Surveying - Volume 2
    • [...] one pair of fetters, one pair of couplings, 2 barlings [poles], 2s 6d; one saddle, one bridle, one panel, 12s; one corn hutch and 1 chaff bin, 6s 8d; one plough, one pair of harness and one coulter, 2 plough sha-[rest torn] with chains, 14s.1981, Ann Hughes, W. R. Owens, Seventeenth-century England, a Changing Culture

Proper noun capitalized: Barling

Barling

  1. A surname.
  2. A village in Barling Magna parish, Rochford district, Essex, England (OS grid ref TQ9389).
  3. A city in Sebastian County, Arkansas, United States.

Forms of barling

pluralbarlings
alternative formberling

Origin of barling

From Middle English *barling, diminutive of Middle English bar, bor (“boar”), equivalent to boar + -ling. Compare Scots bar, bare, bair (“boar”).

From Middle English barling, berling, from Old Norse berlingr (“bar, pole”) (found in berlings-áss (“bar, beam, plank, rail”)), a diminutive derived from Proto-Germanic *barō (“beam, bar, barrier”); equivalent to bar + -ling. Cognate with Swedish bärling (“pole, bar”).

Phrases with barling

Questions about barling

What does barling mean?
Barling means the smallest pig in a litter; runt.
What part of speech is barling?
Barling can be a noun or a proper noun.
What is the plural of barling?
The plural of barling is barlings.

Words near barling in the dictionary

  1. barleywines
  2. Barlig
  3. barlike
  4. barline
  5. barlines
  6. barling
  7. Barling Magna
  8. barlings
  9. Barlip
  10. Barlips
  11. barload

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: barling (page history and authors); Barling (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: “barling.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/barling. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.