Definitions
Etymologies
- Middle English, from Old English bȳre; see bheuə- in Indo-European roots.
Examples
“His farm, little more than a few fields with a house and a byre, is down a track that no-one walks but Jack.”
“In the byre we sat, the heathen and me -- for we were but simple men in this affair -- and the byre was a dark place to be sitting, and in a while old Betty came, havering at hens and talking to herself.”
“a cow's head looking over its biss, and it struck me that the byre was the handy place to get at in Loch Ranza.”
“There were bone tools and spindle whorls carved by hand, occasionally bits of cloth, the single partition in Eirik the Reds byre that was actually made of a whales shoulder blade, all illustrating the settlers daily experience and industry as no broad survey could.”
“He loves the warmth and passes the afternoons in a suntrap in the lee of the byre.”
The Guardian: Spring's here: skylarks overhead, moles in the garden, moths in the bathroom
“I took the plastic tablecloth off my “raised bed” – under which it had spent the winter – and was so struck by the lovely softness of the soil that I confected a second bed with odds and ends of wood from the byre.”
“Then we formed a chain gang to stack it all up in the byre.”
“There is no byre attached so perhaps the weaver sold cloth in return for food rather than raise cropsand cattle for a living.”
“The byre door was open, and a somewhat misshapen person was wedged into its gap: Jorgen the skald.”
“And she plunged back inside the byre to gather up the dead calf.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘byre’.
-
Cattle
cattle, cow, beef, steer, heifer, calf, bull, cattle call, Black Angus, Hereford, Holstein, Dwarf Lulu and 376 more...
-
Words beginning with B
birefringence, bureau, blot, barter, beyond, blunder, byre, byrgius, bowl, baste, bastardsawed, bastel house and 44 more...
-
A Time of Gifts
lambent, gonfalon, ait, eyrie, haberdashery, belfry, capstan, spinney, barbican, hobnail, wharf, waterlogged and 64 more...
-
Tolkien's archaisms
sigaldry, moot, kine, fey, eyot, ghylls, gangrel, glede, ilexes, laved, niggard, league and 44 more...
asativum "When Enkidu was thrown, he said to Gilgamesh, 'There is not another like you in the world. Ninsun, who is as strong as a wild ox in the byre, she was the mother who bore you, and now you are raised above all me, and Enlil has given you the kingship, for your strength surpasses the strength of men.'"
-- The Coming of Enkidu, from The Epic of Gilgamesh Jun 17, 2008