Word.ws English Dictionary

barrio

barrio noun: a municipality or subdivision of a municipality in Spanish America, and in Spain itself.

Noun

barrio (plural barrios)

  1. A municipality or subdivision of a municipality in Spanish America, and in Spain itself.
  2. A slum on the periphery of a major city, or a low to middle-class neighborhood in a lesser city, in Venezuela or the Dominican Republic.
  3. (Philippines) A rural barangay or neighborhood.
    • In the barrio, they talked excitedly about the wood-gatherer's discovery. There was so much pushing and quibbling over details that by the time the barrio had organized itself to set out for Salug to investigate, dusk had already fallen.2008, Resil B. Mojares, “Beast in the Fields”, in Gémino H. Abad, editor, Upon Our Own Ground: Filipino short stories in English: 1956 to 1972, page 413
  4. (US, informal) An area or neighborhood in a US city inhabited predominantly by Spanish-speakers or people of Hispanic origin.
    • After World War II, its prospering working-class white residents moved to other, more upscale suburban developments, and by the 1950s the area had become an isolated ethnic enclave with its own barrio gang.1993, Diego Vigil, “The Established Gang”, in Scott Cummings, Daniel J. Monti, editors, Gangs: The Origins and Impact of Contemporary Youth Gangs in the United States, page 98
    • Mr. Jones and me, stumbling through the barrio1993, “Mr. Jones”, performed by Counting Crows

Proper noun capitalized: Barrio

Barrio (plural Barrios)

  1. A surname from Spanish.

Examples of barrio in a sentence

  • The literal translation of Spanish irse al otro barrio is "to go to the other neighbourhood" but it means "to die".
  • Barrio, often rightly lauded for the power and intensity of her performances, lends her creaturelike presence to the second half.
  • I wouldn't go back in that barrio in a tank."

All 10 example sentences with barrio

Forms of barrio

Noun
pluralbarrios
Proper noun
pluralBarrios

Plural of barrio: barrios

Origin of barrio

Borrowed from Spanish barrio, from Arabic بَرِّيّ (barriyy, “wild”).

Borrowed from Spanish Barrio.

Words formed from barrio

Phrases with barrio

Questions about barrio

What does barrio mean?
Barrio means a municipality or subdivision of a municipality in Spanish America, and in Spain itself.
What part of speech is barrio?
Barrio can be a noun or a proper noun.
What is the plural of barrio?
The plural of barrio is barrios.

Words near barrio in the dictionary

  1. Barrington Tops
  2. barringtonite
  3. barringtonites
  4. Barringtons
  5. Barringun
  6. barrio
  7. Barrio San Jose
  8. barriology
  9. Barrionuevo
  10. barrios
  11. Barrioses

Source and license

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