What's the difference between
and
Enter two words to compare and contrast their definitions, origins, and synonyms to better understand how those words are related.

Barren vs Frail - What's the difference?

barren | frail |

As nouns the difference between barren and frail

is that barren is bar while frail is a basket made of rushes, used chiefly for containing figs and raisins.

As an adjective frail is

easily broken; mentally or physically fragile; not firm or durable; liable to fail and perish; easily destroyed; not tenacious of life; weak; infirm.

As a verb frail is

to play a stringed instrument, usually a banjo, by picking with the back of a fingernail.

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.

    frail

    English

    Adjective

    (er)
  • Easily broken; mentally or physically fragile; not firm or durable; liable to fail and perish; easily destroyed; not tenacious of life; weak; infirm.
  • Liable to fall from virtue or be led into sin; not strong against temptation; weak in resolution; unchaste.

    • Related terms

    * fractal * fraction * fractional * fracture * fragile * fragility * frailly * frailness * frailty

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A basket made of rushes, used chiefly for containing figs and raisins.
  • The quantity of raisins contained in a frail.
  • A rush for weaving baskets.
  • (dated, slang) A girl.
  • * 1931 , (Cab Calloway) / (Irving Mills), ‘Minnie the Moocher’:
    • She was the roughest, toughest frail , but Minnie had a heart as big as a whale.
  • * 1933 , , , edition 1, Book 2, Chapter XXII:
    • There were five people in the Quirinal bar after dinner, a high-class Italian frail who sat on a stool making persistent conversation against the bartender's bored: “Si ... Si ... Si,” a light, snobbish Egyptian who was lonely but chary of the woman, and the two Americans.
  • * 1939 , (Raymond Chandler), The Big Sleep , Penguin 2011, p. 148:
    • ‘She's pickin' 'em tonight, right on the nose,’ he said. ‘That tall black-headed frail .’
  • * 1941 , Preston Sturges, '', published in ''Five Screenplays , ISBN 0-520-05442-4, page 77:
    • Sullivan, the girl and the butler get to the ground. The girl wears a turtle-neck sweater, a cap slightly sideways, a torn coat, turned-up pants and sneakers.
    SULLIVAN Why don't you go back with the car... You look about as much like a boy as .
    THE GIRL All right, they'll think I'm your frail .

    References

    *

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To play a stringed instrument, usually a banjo, by picking with the back of a fingernail.

    • Anagrams

    *