Other forms: barrels, barreled, barrelled
A barrel is the big round wooden container with curved sides and metal hoops around it, wider in the middle than at the ends. Beer barrels rolling down into a cellar, whisky ageing in oak barrels, rainwater collecting in one beside the shed.
The shape lent its name to anything similar, so the barrel of a gun is the metal tube the bullet travels down, and a barrel of oil is a unit of trade, 159 litres, quoted in the news every day. As a verb, to barrel means to move fast and with little control, as in a lorry barrelling down the hill. English is thick with barrel phrases: over a barrel means trapped with no choice, scraping the barrel means down to the worst that is left, a barrel of laughs is great fun and is said when the thing is not, and lock, stock and barrel means the whole of something, after the three parts of an old gun.
1nounbarrelA large round container with curved sides and flat ends, built of wooden staves bound by hoops.~41%
“The cider was left in oak barrels for a year.”
2nounlongThe long metal tube of a gun that the bullet passes through.~16%
“He wiped the barrel of the rifle with an oiled cloth.”
3noununitA unit for measuring oil, equal to about 159 litres.~41%
“Crude oil closed at eighty dollars a barrel.”
4verbmoveIn informal English, to move fast and with little control.~2%
“A van came barrelling round the corner and missed us by inches.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 14 sentences found in the wild and placed 12 of them on a sense (2 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
barrel is a container.
Barrel came through Middle English barel from Anglo-Norman and Old French baril, and where French got it has never been settled. The tidiest guess links it to Frankish and Gothic words for a container, from an Indo-European root bher-, to carry or transport, which fits the meaning as well as the sound. An older attempt to tie it to the bar of the hoops matches the sounds but fails on the sense.
Proto-Indo-European
*bʰer-
Middle English
barel
English, today
barrel
Built from
From Middle English barel. From Middle English barel, from Anglo-Norman baril, Old French baril, bareil (“barrel”), of uncertain origin. An attempt to link baril to Old French barre (“bar, bolt”) (compare Medieval Latin barra (“bar, rod”)) via assumed Vulgar Latin barrīculum meets the phonological requirement, but fails to connect the word semantically. The alternative connection to Frankish baril, beril or Gothic 𐌱𐌴𐍂𐌹𐌻𐍃 (“container for transport”), from Proto-Germanic barilaz, bērilaz (“barrel, jug, container”), from Proto-Indo-European bʰer- (“to carry, transport”), is more plausible as it connects not only the form of the word but also the sense; equivalent to bear + -le. Compare also Old High German biril (“jug, large pot”), lb Bärel, Bierel (“jug, pot”), Old Norse berill (“barrel for liquids”), Old English byrla (“barrel of a horse, trunk, body”). More at bear.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA