Citations:barren

English citations of barren

				1719	1818 1843
ME «	15th c.	16th c.	17th c.	18th c.	19th c.	20th c.	21st c.

• 1719 — Daniel Defoe. Robinson Crusoe.

  I found also that the island I was in was barren, and, as I saw good reason to believe, uninhabited except by wild beasts, of whom, however, I saw none.

• 1818 — Mary Shelley. Frankenstein.

  I saw, with surprise and grief, the leaves decay and fall, and nature again assume the barren and bleak appearance it had worn when I first beheld the woods and the lovely moon.

  The soil was barren, scarcely affording pasture for a few miserable cows, and oatmeal for its inhabitants, which consisted of five persons, whose gaunt and scraggy limbs gave tokens of their miserable fare.

• 1843 — Charles Dickens. A Christmas Carol.

  The old man, in a voice that seldom rose above the howling of the wind upon the barren waste, was singing them a Christmas song — it had been a very old song when he was a boy — and from time to time they all joined in the chorus.