BARNACLE

barnacle, cirriped, cirripede

(noun) marine crustaceans with feathery food-catching appendages; free-swimming as larvae; as adults form a hard shell and live attached to submerged surfaces

Source: WordNet® 3.1


Etymology

Noun

barnacle (plural barnacles)

A marine crustacean of the subclass Cirripedia that attaches itself to submerged surfaces such as tidal rocks or the bottoms of ships.

Hypernyms: arthropod, crustacean

The barnacle goose.

(engineering, slang) In electrical engineering, a change made to a product on the manufacturing floor that was not part of the original product design.

(computing, slang) On printed circuit boards, a change such as soldering a wire in order to connect two points, or addition such as an added resistor or capacitor, subassembly or daughterboard.

(software engineering, slang) A deprecated or obsolete file, image or other artifact that remains with a project even though it is no longer needed.

(obsolete, in the plural) An instrument like a pair of pincers, to fix on the nose of a vicious horse while shoeing so as to make it more tractable.

Synonym: twitch

(archaic, British, slang, in the plural) A pair of spectacles.

(slang, obsolete) A good job, or snack easily obtained.

(slang) A worldly sailor.

Synonym: shellback

Verb

barnacle (third-person singular simple present barnacles, present participle barnacling, simple past and past participle barnacled)

To connect with or attach.

To press close against something.

Anagrams

• balancer

Source: Wiktionary


Bar"na*cle, n. Etym: [Prob. from E. barnacle a kind of goose, which was popularly supposed to grow from this shellfish; but perh. from LL. bernacula for pernacula, dim. of perna ham, sea mussel; cf. Gr. ham Cf. F. bernacle, barnacle, E. barnacle a goose; and Ir. bairneach, barneach, limpet.] (Zoöl.)

Definition: Any cirriped crustacean adhering to rocks, floating timber, ships, etc., esp. (a) the sessile species (genus Balanus and allies), and (b) the stalked or goose barnacles (genus Lepas and allies). See Cirripedia, and Goose barnacle. Barnacle eater (Zoöl.), the orange filefish.

– Barnacle scale (Zoöl.), a bark louse (Ceroplastes cirripediformis) of the orange and quince trees in Florida. The female scale curiously resembles a sessile barnacle in form.

Bar"na*cle, n. Etym: [See Bernicle.]

Definition: A bernicle goose.

Bar"na*cle, n. Etym: [OE. bernak, bernacle; cf. OF. bernac, and Prov. F. (Berri) berniques, spectacles.]

1. pl. (Far.)

Definition: An instrument for pinching a horse's nose, and thus restraining him.

Note: [Formerly used in the sing.] The barnacles . . . give pain almost equal to that of the switch. Youatt.

2. pl.

Definition: Spectacles; -- so called from their resemblance to the barnacles used by farriers. [Cant, Eng.] Dickens.

Source: Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary 1913 Edition



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Word of the Day

2 April 2025

COVERT

(adjective) secret or hidden; not openly practiced or engaged in or shown or avowed; “covert actions by the CIA”; “covert funding for the rebels”


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Coffee Trivia

According to Guinness World Records, on 25 September 2016, the Birla Institute of Management Technology (India) in Uttar Pradesh, India, constructed the largest coffee cups pyramid consisting of 23,821 cups. They used paper takeaway coffee cups to build the pyramid.

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