barn door
5
1.0
- noun
- /bɑrn dɔr/
:
puerta del granero
- The farmer opened the barn door to let the cows inside for the evening.
- an open barn door
- shut the barn door
- close the barn door
Examples
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She carefully shut the barn door to keep the sheep from wandering out.
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You got to open the barn door!
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And you know, you have to lock the barn door before you want to keep the horse, not after.
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And out there are huge barn doors.
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Your man left the barn door open.
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I must have left the barn door open.
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Why run out and close the barn door when the horse is gone?
Fiction book (1990) -
Outside, through the open barn doors, we see Sarah and her mother running towards them.
Fiction book (1994) -
And be sure the barn door's fastened.
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But the cows were already at the barn door, impatient to be fed and milked.
Fiction book (2002)
Synonyms
∞
1.0
A thing in a wall, building or vehicle that opens so people can go in and out
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a large door at the entrance of a barn' is directly and transparently derived from combining 'barn' (farm building) with 'door' (a barrier covering an entry). This is a straightforward compositional noun-noun compound following common cross-linguistic patterns, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents will understand it.
Etymology
Barn door is a literal farm name. A barn is the farm building and the door is the wide opening used to 'move' animals, hay, or farm machines in and out, so the phrase simply means 'a large door at the entrance of a barn'.