barrette
Americannoun
-
barrettes
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of barrette
From French, dating back to 1900–05; see origin at bar 1, -ette
Explanation
A barrette is a clip or pin that holds a small amount of hair away from your face. You might be especially fond of your butterfly-shaped barrette. Barrettes are partly useful — they can keep hair out of your eyes — and partly ornamental. Young children sometimes wear brightly colored plastic barrettes in their hair, while adults tend to stick to more sedate, simple barrettes. The word barrette is a diminutive form of the French barre, "bar," after the size and shape of the typical barrette.
Vocabulary lists containing barrette
Power Suffix: -ette
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El Deafo
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Moxie
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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:
A blue velvet box bearing a label "bracelets of Queen Marie Antoinette" holds the double bracelets, each composed of three strings of diamonds and a large barrette clasp, for a total of 112 diamonds.
From Reuters ● Nov. 3, 2021
Hair was wound into a tight bun or frizzed-out, perhaps accented by golden heart barrette, lightly folded like butterfly wings.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 22, 2021
Mu ran in gold-painted fingernails and a red barrette stamped with the word “CONFIDENT.”
From Washington Post ● Aug. 3, 2021
Before she left the United States to compete in the Olympics, Athing Mu spied a hair barrette in a department store.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 3, 2021
I thought of all the dreams I had had about how I was going to find some excuse for seeing Vivian to give her the barrette I had bought for her.
From "Silent To The Bone" by E.L. Konigsburg
Either way, the onetime roommates and bandmates pioneered a discomfiting broken-doll aesthetic of smudged eyeliner, smeared lipstick and plastic barrettes clipped to hanks of bleached-out hair.
From Salon ● Jun. 12, 2026
In 2021, he told a veteran’s daughter, “I love those barrettes in your hair, man.”
From Washington Times ● Nov. 19, 2023
Parents were braiding children’s hair, adding ribbons and pig-shaped barrettes.
From New York Times ● Jul. 25, 2023
“That’s a fancy baby,” a 4-year-old girl with colorful barrettes said as she walked by our stroller at a neighborhood park.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 29, 2022
The bedroom looks as if a monsoon has passed through it: clothes, barrettes, shoes, socks, belts, and scarves are strewn everywhere—on the bed that Chou and I share as well as on Keav’s bed.
From "First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers" by Loung Ung
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
