Word.ws English Dictionary

barn door

barn door noun: the large door of a barn.

Noun

barn door (plural barn doors)

  1. The large door of a barn.
  2. (humorous) Something large enough that a miss ought to be impossible.
    • Buying a barn door won't help your tennis game.
  3. A player who blocks every ball.
  4. (euphemistic, humorous) The groin area of a pair of pants, especially in reference to a fly.
    • Somebody forgot to close his barn door again!
  5. An off-balance pivot on two points of contact.

Verb

barn door (third-person singular simple present barn doors, present participle barn dooring, simple past and past participle barn doored)

  1. (transitive) To apply or adjust the barn doors as part of lighting.
    • Which might mean shaping it, gelling it, snooting it, barn dooring it, and putting it on a stand or a clamp. Maybe taking the dome diffuser off. Perhaps zooming it. Oh my. And you thought you were just taking a picture.2011, Joe McNally, Sketching Light
    • These backlights are placed in the ideal position, directly in line with each cross camera lens, barn doored to light only the back of the participants.2012, E. P. J. Tozer, Broadcast Engineer's Reference Book, page 518

Forms of barn door

Noun
pluralbarn doors
alternative formbarndoor
alternative formbarn-door
Verb
third-person singular presentbarn doors
present participlebarn dooring
past participlebarn doored
pastbarn doored

Origin of barn door

From barn + door.

Questions about barn door

What does barn door mean?
Barn door means the large door of a barn.
What part of speech is barn door?
Barn door can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of barn door?
The plural of barn door is barn doors.

Words near barn door in the dictionary

  1. barn coat
  2. barn dance
  3. barn danced
  4. barn dances
  5. barn dancing
  6. barn door
  7. barn door wipe
  8. barn doored
  9. barn dooring
  10. barn doors
  11. barn egg

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: barn door (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: en-au-barn door.ogg.

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