barracks

British

/ ˈbærəks /

plural noun

a building or group of buildings used to accommodate military personnel
any large building used for housing people, esp temporarily
a large and bleak building

"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

Etymology

Origin of barracks

C17: from French baraque , from Old Catalan barraca hut, of uncertain origin

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

barracks

Members of 5 Rifles got up at 05:00 BST on the day of the incident and left their barracks at 07:00, the inquest heard.

From BBC ● Oct. 26, 2026

Qusra Mayor Abdul Azim Wadi told the BBC that Israeli forces were using some of the vacated Palestinian houses as barracks.

From BBC ● Aug. 14, 2026

“History will absolve me,” Castro said in a famous speech defending himself after his failed 1953 attack on a military barracks.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 13, 2026

The book includes photos of makeshift camps, barracks, latrines and other infrastructure, including the photography bunkers from which images of the explosion would be taken.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 7, 2026

We settled in Bonetti Ranch, where we had lived in army barracks off and on for the past few years.

From "Breaking Through" by Francisco Jiménez

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023