bar out

English

Verb

bar out (third-person singular simple present bars out, present participle barring out, simple past and past participle barred out)

1. (transitive, literally) To keep (someone or something) from entering.
2. (obsolete) To shut a teacher out of the classroom as a prank.

   Synonym: outbar

   • 1728, The Journal of a Modern Lady, Jonathan Swift:

     Not schoolboys at a barring out
     Rais’d ever such incessant rout

   • 1913, G. K. Chesterton, “chapter 3”, in The Victorian Age in Literature:

     We feel that it is a disgrace to a man like Tennyson, when he talks of the French revolutions, the huge crusades that had recreated the whole of his civilisation, as being "no graver than a schoolboy's barring out."

Anagrams

• Aburto, Otruba, outbar, rubato, tabour