barber

[bahr-ber]

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noun

a person whose occupation it is to cut and dress the hair of customers, especially men, and to shave or trim the beard.

verb (used with object)

to trim or dress the hair or beard of.

Origin of barber

1275–1325; Middle English barbour < Anglo-French; Old French barbeor, equivalent to barb(e) (< Latin barba beard) + -eor < Latin -ātōr- -ator

Related formsun·bar·bered, adjectivewell-bar·bered, adjective

Barber

[bahr-ber]

noun

Samuel,1910–81, U.S. composer.

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2019

Related Words for barber

hairdresser, cosmetologist, coiffeur, coiffeuse, beautician, shaver

Examples from the Web for barber

Contemporary Examples of barber

Business owners swept up glass in front of their barber shop.
Raging Protesters Set Ferguson on Fire
Justin Glawe
November 25, 2014
That is why Malloy is campaigning on a lonely stretch of barber shops and boxing gyms in New Haven a week before the election.
Dan Malloy Is Progressives’ Dream Governor. So Why Isn’t He Winning?
David Freedlander
October 30, 2014
“If you say a bad word about someone here, it gets around fast,” said Jack West, the barber.
Nunn-Perdue: The Devil Went Down to Perry, Georgia
Patricia Murphy
October 10, 2014
He looked, that dreadful afternoon, as if he had just come from his barber, tailor and haberdasher.
The Stacks: H.L. Mencken on the 1904 Baltimore Fire
H.L. Mencken
October 4, 2014
Admirable stuff, but also on his agenda could be just a fleeting visit to a barber.
Leo, the Beard Has to Go: When a Man’s Facial Hair Reaches Crisis Point
Tim Teeman
September 22, 2014

Historical Examples of barber

Barber and Stillwell and Colpetzer and their associates did not die in vain.
The Works of Whittier, Volume VII (of VII)
John Greenleaf Whittier
I shall not go to bed till night; but I want a bedroom, and a barber.
A Tale of Two Cities
Charles Dickens
Grasping the situation I replied that I did not like my barber.
City of Endless Night
Milo Hastings
He was the son of a barber at Laval, in Maine, where he was born in 1509.
Self-Help
Samuel Smiles
It is so called from a fancied resemblance to a wig on a barber's block.
The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise
M. E. Hard

British Dictionary definitions for barber

barber

noun

a person whose business is cutting men's hair and shaving or trimming beards

verb (tr)

to cut the hair of

to shave or trim the beard of

Word Origin for barber

C13: from Old French barbeor, from barbe beard, from Latin barba

Barber

noun

Samuel . 1910–81, US composer: his works include an Adagio for Strings, adapted from the second movement of his string quartet No. 1 (1936) and the opera Vanessa (1958)

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Word Origin and History for barber

c.1300, from Anglo-French barbour (attested as a surname from early 13c.), from Old French barbeor, barbieor (Modern French barbier, which has a more restricted sense than the English word), from Vulgar Latin *barbatorem, from Latin barba "beard" (see barb (n.)). Originally also regular practitioners of surgery, they were restricted to haircutting and dentistry under Henry VIII.