barrack

[In Sw. barack; Dan. barrak; Ger. barracke; Fr. baraque = a barrack, a hut, a hovel, a little paltry house, a room, a shop, a work-shop, a public-house; Sp. barraca = a small cabin made by a Spanish fisherman on the sea-shore; Port. & Ital. barraca = a barrack.] † 1. A hut or small lodge. Formerly it was especially used for a humble temporary building of this character, one of many erected to shelter horsemen, as contradistinguished from similar structures, called huts, for foot soldiers. Then it was extended to embrace any temporary erection for a soldier, to whatever arm of the service belonging. The sepoys of the Indian army are still housed in this way, and the case was formerly the same with the ordinary English soldiers. (See an example from Gibbon in Wedgwood's Dict. of Eng . Etym ., 2nd ed., 1872, p. 49.) 2. A straw-thatched roof supported by four posts, capable of being raised or lowered at pleasure, and under which hay is kept. ( Bart lett: Dict. American isms .) 3. Generally in the plur ., Barracks : A larg building erected to house soldiers or for some similar purpose; also a large building used to house soldiers, for whatever purpose it may at first have been built. "He Bishop Hall] lived to see his cathedral converted into a barrack, and his palace into an alehouse." T. Warton: Hist . of Eng . Poet ., iv. 2. As a writer in the Penny Cyclop . shows, the word barrack does not occur in our older dictionaries, though it is found in Phillips's World of Words , fol. (1706). In 1720 an effort was made to erect barracks in London, under the false pretence that they would be used as hospitals for those who might be seized by the plague, which, though extinct in England, was then raging at Marseilles. The device was, however, seen through, and had to be abandoned. The first permanent barracks were erected just before 1739; but even as late as the French revolutionary war, opposition was made to their being built on an extensive scale, their existence being considered dangerous to civil liberty. At length the perilous character of the contest with France made it absolutely e ential that barracks should at once be erected in various places, and in 1792 the work was undertaken in earnest. By the end of 1819 more than three millions of pounds had been expended in carrying it out. Shortly after the Revolution of 1688 more vehement resistance than that given to the erection of barracks had been offered to the retention of a standing army. [ARMY.] The fidelity of the British soldiers, so markedly contrasting with the frequent disloyalty of the modern Spanish troops or of the old Roman 445 prætori an guards, has long since procured universal tolerance in England both of a standing army and of barracks for its accommodation, This feeling about barracks never extended to the United States, and our soldiers have always been well housed, with excellent provisions for comfort and accommodation. barrack-master, s. An officer who has charge of a soldier's barrack and its inmates.