barb

1. 1.

   provide with barbs

   “barbed wire”

   Broaderchange

Other forms of barb

plural

barbs·

past tense

barbed·

present participle

barbing·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about barb

What does barb mean?

barb means "an aggressive remark directed at a person like a missile and intended to have a telling effect". That is the primary sense; the word has 5 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in barb?

barb has 1 syllable: barb. In IPA it is /ˈbɑɹb/.

What is another word for barb?

Close synonyms include shot, shaft, slam, dig, jibe. 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 barb a common word?

barb is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.

What rhymes with barb?

1 word rhymes with barb. Rhymes are matched on the phonemes from the last stressed vowel onward, which is the definition a reader has in their head.