barricade

Word family

• barrier
  nounB2
• barricaded
  adjectiveC2

Synonym discussion

Sense: noun/1

All four words describe something that stops movement, but each fits a different scene. A 'barricade' is built fast from whatever objects are near — desks, cars, sandbags — and usually appears during fights, riots, or police action. A 'barrier' is the broadest word: it can be planned and permanent (a metal fence at a train station) or temporary (a rope at a museum), and there is no idea of conflict. A 'blockade' is bigger in scale, often used for a navy stopping ships from entering a port or a group cutting off supplies to a whole area. A 'fence' is built to mark land or keep animals in, not to stop a sudden threat. So you say 'farmers built a barricade across the road' (urgent, makeshift), 'put up a fence around the garden' (planned, lasting), and 'the navy set up a blockade of the island' (large-scale strategy).

Common collocations

Etymology

Comes from the French word 'barricade', from 'barrique' meaning a large barrel. In sixteenth-century Paris, people defending their streets would roll big barrels filled with stones or earth into the road to stop soldiers — so the thing was named after what it was first made from. English borrowed the word in the late 1500s, keeping both the noun and the verb.