bar sinister

Questions about bar sinister

What does bar sinister mean?

bar sinister means "the status of being born to parents who were not married". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

What is another word for bar sinister?

Close synonyms include bastardy, illegitimacy, bend sinister. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is bar sinister a common word?

bar sinister is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.