Barren vs Absurd - What's the difference?

barren | absurd |

As a noun barren

is bar.

As an adjective absurd is

absurd.

barren

English

Adjective

(en-adj)

(label) Unable to bear children; sterile.

I silently wept as my daughter's husband rejected her. What would she do now that she was no longer a maiden but also barren ?

Of poor fertility, infertile; not producing vegetation.

* (1800–1859)

barren mountain tracts

* '>citation

Bleak.

*{{quote-book, year=1922, author=(Michael Arlen), title= “Piracy”: A Romantic Chronicle of These Days, chapter=Ep./4/2

, passage=As they turned into Hertford Street they startled a robin from the poet's head on a barren fountain, and he fled away with a cameo note.}}

Unproductive; fruitless; unprofitable; empty.

* (1796-1859)

brilliant but barren reveries

* (Jonathan Swift) (1667–1745)

Some schemes will appear barren of hints and matter.

* {{quote-news, year=2011, date=September 2, author=Phil McNulty, work=BBC

, title= Bulgaria 0-3 England , passage=Rooney had been suffered a barren spell for England with only one goal in 15 games but he was in no mood to ignore the gifts on offer in front of an increasingly subdued Bulgarian support.}}

Mentally dull; stupid.

* (William Shakespeare), (Hamlet), III.ii. ca. 1602

Set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too.

Synonyms

* sterile

Antonyms

* fertile * fruitful

Noun

(en noun)

An area of low fertility and habitation, a desolate place.

The pine barrens are a site lonely enough to suit any hermit.

absurd

English

Adjective

(en-adj)

Contrary to reason or propriety; obviously and flatly opposed to manifest truth; inconsistent with the plain dictates of common sense; logically contradictory; nonsensical; ridiculous; silly.

* 1591 , (William Shakespeare), , V-iv

This proffer is absurd and reasonless.

* ca. 1710 , (Alexander Pope)

This phrase absurd to call a villain great

* , chapter=17

, title= The Mirror and the Lamp , passage=“Perhaps it is because I have been excommunicated. It's absurd , but I feel like the Jackdaw of Rheims.” ¶ She winced and bowed her head. Each time that he spoke flippantly of the Church he caused her pain.}}

(obsolete) Inharmonious; dissonant.

Having no rational or orderly relationship to people's lives; meaningless; lacking order or value.

* (rfdate) Adults have condemned them to live in what must seem like an absurd universe. - Joseph Featherstone

Dealing with absurdism.

Usage notes

* More and most absurd are the preferred or more common form of the comparable, as opposed to absurder and absurdest. * Among the synonyms: ** Irrational is the weakest, denoting that which is plainly inconsistent with the dictates of sound reason; as, an irrational course of life. ** Foolish rises higher, and implies either a perversion of that faculty, or an absolute weakness or fatuity of mind; as, foolish enterprises. ** Absurd rises still higher, denoting that which is plainly opposed to received notions of propriety and truth; as, an absurd man, project, opinion, story, argument, etc. ** Preposterous rises still higher, and supposes an absolute inversion'' in the order of things; or, in plain terms, a "putting of the cart before the horse;" as, a ''preposterous'' suggestion, ''preposterous'' conduct, a ''preposterous regulation or law.

Synonyms

* foolish, irrational, ridiculous, preposterous, inconsistent, incongruous, ludicrous * See also

Derived terms

* absurdly, absurdity * Absurdistan

Noun

(en noun) (Absurdism)

(obsolete) An absurdity.

(philosophy) The opposition between the human search for meaning in life and the inability to find any; the state or condition in which man exists in an irrational universe and his life has no meaning outside of his existence.

Usage notes

* (philosophy) Absurd is sometimes preceded by the word the .

Derived terms

* theatre of the absurd

References

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