See barbative in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
{
"etymology_text": "Possibly a blend of barb, in the sense of \"a cutting remark\" and rebarbative (“repellent, irritating”).",
"forms": [
{
"form": "more barbative",
"tags": [
"comparative"
]
},
{
"form": "most barbative",
"tags": [
"superlative"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {},
"expansion": "barbative (comparative more barbative, superlative most barbative)",
"name": "en-adj"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "adj",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with 1 entry",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with entries",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
139,
148
]
],
"ref": "2002, Colleen McCullough, The October Horse, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, pages 580–581:",
"text": "Most of the time he lay among the shadows, left the conversation to his elders. Except for those sudden, uncannily prescient, occasionally barbative, remarks. Uttered quietly but firmly.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"Harshly critical or blunt; sarcastic."
],
"id": "en-barbative-en-adj-sYh83fag",
"links": [
[
"Harshly",
"harshly"
],
[
"critical",
"critical"
],
[
"blunt",
"blunt"
],
[
"sarcastic",
"sarcastic"
]
]
}
],
"word": "barbative"
}
{
"etymology_text": "Possibly a blend of barb, in the sense of \"a cutting remark\" and rebarbative (“repellent, irritating”).",
"forms": [
{
"form": "more barbative",
"tags": [
"comparative"
]
},
{
"form": "most barbative",
"tags": [
"superlative"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {},
"expansion": "barbative (comparative more barbative, superlative most barbative)",
"name": "en-adj"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "adj",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"English adjectives",
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English lemmas",
"English terms with quotations",
"Pages with 1 entry",
"Pages with entries"
],
"examples": [
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
139,
148
]
],
"ref": "2002, Colleen McCullough, The October Horse, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, pages 580–581:",
"text": "Most of the time he lay among the shadows, left the conversation to his elders. Except for those sudden, uncannily prescient, occasionally barbative, remarks. Uttered quietly but firmly.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"Harshly critical or blunt; sarcastic."
],
"links": [
[
"Harshly",
"harshly"
],
[
"critical",
"critical"
],
[
"blunt",
"blunt"
],
[
"sarcastic",
"sarcastic"
]
]
}
],
"word": "barbative"
}
Download raw JSONL data for barbative meaning in English (1.2kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-01-16 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-01-01 using wiktextract (d1270d2 and 9905b1f). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.