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# barleycorn

«barleycorn» in Mova's school dictionary: **one grain of barley, a tiny seed from the barley plant** — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples.

### part of speech

noun (barleycorns)

### meaning for a pupil

1) A barleycorn is one grain of barley, a tiny seed from the barley plant. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/B/barleycorn/#m1)

2) An old unit of length, about a third of an inch, used in old measuring. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/B/barleycorn/#m2)

### sense in the lessons

in fairy tales a single grain stands for something very small or very precious, as when a fairy asks for only one barleycorn in place of jewels.

### examples

- One barleycorn is a tiny grain of barley. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/B/barleycorn/#x1)
- The hen pecked up every barleycorn in the yard. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/B/barleycorn/#x2)
- The fairy said she would rather have one barleycorn than all the jewels. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/B/barleycorn/#x3)

### note

nothing for maths; a count of barleycorns is just a count of single grains.

### Trees and pragmatics

[Every meaning and example of «barleycorn» parsed by Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/B/barleycorn/), each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.