Word.ws English Dictionary

in the barrel

in the barrel prepositional phrase: in an unpleasant or dangerous situation.

Prepositional phrase

  1. (slang) In an unpleasant or dangerous situation.
    • It’s Your Turn In The Barrel: accident investigation duty1967, Aerospace Safety, volume 23, number 2, page i
    • Reluctantly, Armstrong began spending more and more “time in the barrel,” as the astronauts called the frequent public appearances that were considered an important part of the job, because it was believed by NASA brass the only way to keep Congress passing billion-dollar budgets was to keep the...2005, Leon Wagener, One Giant Leap: Neil Armstrong's Stellar American Journey
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see in, barrel.

Examples of in the barrel in a sentence

  • Staffers rotated on and off the committee and, as it happened, this month I was in the barrel along with three others.2006, Mark Ethridge, Grievances, page 64:
  • We helped put him in the barrel and we're the only ones who can stop it.2009, Mark Sullivan, Triple Cross, page 198:
  • Practically everybody who worked for the director, including his closest friends, spent time “in the barrel.” “We'd all get our turn,” Andy Devine said.2014, Ronald L. Davis, John Ford: Hollywood's Old Master:

Origin of in the barrel

Attested 1950s. Presumably from a bawdy military joke, featuring a barrel with a glory hole, whose punchline is “It’s your turn in the barrel.” The joke has many variants and embellishments, but the kernel is: a new sailor is being given a tour of the boat, and is shown a barrel with a glory hole, which they are able to use any time, except Tuesdays. When he asks why not Tuesdays, he is told: “Because it’s your turn in the barrel.” Other hypotheses is that it is derived from like shooting fish in a barrel, or that it referred to a form of punishment in which the malefactor was confined within a barrel.

Questions about in the barrel

What does in the barrel mean?
In the barrel means in an unpleasant or dangerous situation.
How do you use in the barrel in a sentence?
Staffers rotated on and off the committee and, as it happened, this month I was in the barrel along with three others.
What part of speech is in the barrel?
In the barrel is a prepositional phrase.

Words near in the barrel in the dictionary

  1. in the ascendant
  2. in the back seat
  3. in the bag
  4. in the ballpark
  5. in the bargain
  6. in the barrel
  7. in the bed
  8. in the bedroom
  9. in the biblical sense
  10. in the black
  11. in the blink of an eye

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: in the barrel (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: “in the barrel.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/in_the_barrel. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.