barrel (barrels plural) (barrelling present participle) (barrelled past tense & past participle )
in AM, use barreling, barreled
1 n-count A barrel is a large, round container for liquids or food.
The wine is aged for almost a year in oak barrels.
2 n-count In the oil industry, a barrel is a unit of measurement equal to 159 litres.
oft N of n
In 1989, Kuwait was exporting 1.5 million barrels of oil a day..., Oil prices were closing at $19.76 a barrel.
3 n-count The barrel of a gun is the tube through which the bullet moves when the gun is fired.
oft N of n, n N
He pushed the barrel of the gun into the other man's open mouth.
4 verb If a vehicle or person is barreling in a particular direction, they are moving very quickly in that direction.
(mainly AM)
(=career)
The car was barreling down the street at a crazy speed. V prep/adv
6 If you say, for example, that someone moves or buys something lock, stock, and barrel, you are emphasizing that they move or buy every part or item of it.
lock, stock, and barrel phrase PHR after v (emphasis)
They dug up their New Jersey garden and moved it lock, stock, and barrel back home.
7 If you say that someone is scraping the barrel, or scraping the bottom of the barrel, you disapprove of the fact that they are using or doing something of extremely poor quality. INFORMAL
scrape the barrel phrase V inflects (disapproval)
barrel organ (barrel organs plural )A barrel organ is a large machine that plays music when you turn the handle on the side. Barrel organs used to be played in the street to entertain people. n-count
pork barrel , pork-barrel
If you say that someone is using pork barrel politics, you mean that they are spending a lot of government money on a local project in order to win the votes of the people who live in that area.
(mainly AM) n-sing usu N n (disapproval)
Pork-barrel politicians hand out rents to win votes and influence people.
