barley

Other forms of barley

plural

barleys·

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 barley

What does barley mean?

barley means "a grain of barley". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in barley?

barley has 2 syllables: bar-ley. The stress falls on "bar". In IPA it is /ˈbɑɹli/.

What is another word for barley?

Close synonyms include barleycorn. 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 barley a common word?

barley 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.