Definition of "barren"

Forget not, in your speed, Antonius,To touch Calpurnia; for our elders say,The barren, touched in this holy chase,Shake off their sterile curse.

1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, (please specify the act number in uppercase Roman numerals, and the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals)

The druids […] believed that mistletoe could make barren animals fecund, and that it was an antidote to all poisons.

2014 December 23, Olivia Judson, “The hemiparasite season ”, in The New York Times‎

barren mountain tracts

1849–1861, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter 1, in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volumes (please specify |volume=I to V), London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans

We have descended Tian Shan and entered the Taklamakan Desert, a barren landscape painted in ecru—no shrubs, no grass, only waves upon waves of naked ridges the color of buff, the highest few spotted with white specks of snow.

2009, Y.J. Zhu, “Taklamakan Desert Moon Ride”, in Lucy McCauley, editor, The Best Women's Travel Writing 2009: True Stories from Around the World (Travelers' Tales)‎, page 154

Terraforming even a barren planet often involves significant financial and ethical hurdles.

2017, BioWare, Mass Effect: Andromeda (Science Fiction), Redwood City: Electronic Arts, PC, scene: Technology: Terraforming Codex entry

But schemes are perfectly accidental. Some will appear barren of hints and matter, but prove to be fruitful.

August 28, 1731, Jonathan Swift, letter to John Gay

As they turned into Hertford Street they startled a robin from the poet's head on a barren fountain, and he fled away with a cameo note.

1922, Michael Arlen, “Epilogue Chapter IV”, in “Piracy”: A Romantic Chronicle of These Days, section 2

brilliant but barren reveries

1843, William H[ickling] Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico, […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), New York, N.Y.: Harper and Brothers, […]

A third is wroth: ‘Is this an hour⁠For private sorrow’s barren song,⁠When more and more the people throngThe chairs and thrones of civil power?’

1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], canto XXI, page 35

When the entire coast-line becomes a sea of waving palms, with Chinese and Malay villages fringing the shores, which are at present mere barren wastes of mangroves, with plantations of pepper, of gambier, and of tapioca and rice, the Northern Territory, backed up by the unswerving energy of the Australian squatter, miner, and planter, will present a spectacle almost unknown in the scheme of British colonization.

1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 270

Rooney had been suffered a barren spell for England with only one goal in 15 games but he was in no mood to ignore the gifts on offer in front of an increasingly subdued Bulgarian support.

2011 September 2, Phil McNulty, “Bulgaria 0-3 England”, in BBC

Set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too.

c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act III, scene ii]

Sol squinted out over the barrens to where the mountains shimmered in the heat haze.

1990, Dan Simmons, The Fall of Hyperion, 1st edition, New York: Doubleday, page 165