[f. BARN sb.] The large door of a barn. (Applied humorously to a target too large to be easily missed, and, in Cricket, to a player that blocks every ball.)
1547. J. Heywood, Four P’s, in Dodsl., O. P. (1780), I. 87. Bendynge his browes as brode as barne-durres.
1632. Milton, L’Allegro, 51. While the cock … to the stack or the barn-door, Stoutly struts his dames before.
1679. ‘Tom Ticklefoot,’ Trials of Wakeman, 9. My Old Master Clodpate would have been hanged before he would have missed such a Barn-dore.
1847. Longf., Ev., I. ii. 50. Heavily closed, with a jarring sound, the valves of the barn-doors.
attrib. Reared at the barn-door.
c. 1685. in Dk. Buckhm’s. Wks., 1705, II. 48. She … slew a Barn-door Fowl with her own Hands.
1783. Wolcott (P. Pindar), Ode to R. Acad., i. Wks. I. 50. Plump as barn-door chicken.
1815. Scott, Guy M., xlv. Our barn-door chuckies.
