How to Use barnacle in a Sentence

barnacle

noun
  • White barnacles, like stars, climb aboard her shell and fall asleep.
    — Literary Hub, 23 Feb. 2026
  • Most of those rocks are instead bare or clothed in barnacles.
    — Alaska Dispatch News, 10 July 2017
  • The base of the cape will offer views of sea stars, anemones, barnacles, and more.
    — Molly Allen, Travel + Leisure, 28 Oct. 2025
  • Use a sharp paring knife to scrape off any barnacles or dirt on the shells, and check for beards.
    — Rochelle Bilow, Bon Appetit, 9 Apr. 2018
  • The barnacles were fed fresh brine shrimp for three weeks to monitor their growth.
    — Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 24 Aug. 2023
  • Likely to a temp job of her own, sitting in for some other barnacle.
    — Parul Sehgal, New York Times, 25 Feb. 2020
  • Check out the barnacle print, navy anchor, and sea glass designs that are sure to be the talk of the ship.
    — Jill Schildhouse, Travel + Leisure, 27 Mar. 2023
  • Siblings may be latched onto each other, like a barnacle to the hull of a ship.
    — Geoffrey Greif, Baltimore Sun, 28 Feb. 2026
  • The oyster's shell is clean, with not a single barnacle clinging to it.
    — Todd A. Price, NOLA.com, 27 Feb. 2018
  • In comparison, the barnacle glue formed a bond that was eight times tougher.
    — Max G. Levy, Wired, 24 Aug. 2021
  • When the whisky bottles are hauled up, they are often covered with barnacles.
    — Zenger News, Forbes, 18 Apr. 2023
  • And a whole lobster showed up with barnacles on its body and the taste of creek water, like an overblown crawfish.
    — Mike Sutter, ExpressNews.com, 12 Dec. 2019
  • And then at the same time somebody who worked for Bruce, scraping barnacles off his boat, drowned.
    — Clark Collis, EW.com, 25 May 2023
  • After that were barnacles, then gastropods [such as snails and slugs], then bivalves such as clams.
    — Mark Fischetti, Scientific American, 30 Aug. 2019
  • Bring shrimp, fiddler crabs, oysters or barnacles for the best results.
    — Brent Gaskill, Tampa Bay Times, 21 Feb. 2017
  • And Pollicipes polymerus may not be the only species of barnacle that does it.
    — Daniel Cressey, Scientific American, 16 Jan. 2013
  • The barnacles, the mussels, the orange sponge and baby brittle stars who shared her colony’s bit of pier.
    — Mandy-Suzanne Wong, Longreads, 5 Feb. 2026
  • As soon as a juvenile mussel or barnacle tried to settle down, the lobsters scraped it up and ate it.
    — Christie Wilcox, Discover Magazine, 27 Aug. 2018
  • Shark skin, too, is covered with dermal denticles—tiny teeth, which keep away the barnacles that plague whales.
    — Katherine Rundell, The New Yorker, 29 July 2024
  • Bailey said there’s also the need to scrape off barnacles that had attached themselves to ships while anchored for months.
    — Chris Isidore, CNN Money, 20 June 2026
  • The array of shellfish, raw and cooked, may include gooseneck barnacles but no lobsters.
    — Florence Fabricant, New York Times, 3 Sep. 2019
  • Unchecked, the starfish’s barnacle prey went wild — only to then be devoured by marauding mussels.
    — Adam Hadhazy, Discover Magazine, 10 Oct. 2019
  • Motorists must then take the barnacle to a drop-off location within 24 hours.
    — USA TODAY, 9 July 2019
  • Turner awakens from what appears to be a bad dream, and all seems normal — except for barnacles under the bed.
    — Bryan Alexander, USA TODAY, 27 May 2017
  • Saltwater corrodes the moving parts, and marine life like barnacles can jam blades.
    — Mrigakshi Dixit, Interesting Engineering, 15 Jan. 2026
  • When divers scrub off barnacles attached to those boats, minute particles of copper dissolve in the salt water.
    — Roger Showley, sandiegouniontribune.com, 5 July 2017
  • Then, the barnacles tangled in my hair will be my wedding crown and the shining fish that nibble my skin will be my silver wedding dress.
    — Elisabeth Egan, chicagotribune.com, 10 June 2017
  • The reef includes plush fish, barnacles, starfish, sea anemone and a removable octopus rattle kids can pull off and shake.
    — Taryn Mohrman, wsj.com, 8 Dec. 2023
  • The geochemistry of barnacle shells provides clues as to where the barnacles have traveled.
    — Tim Newcomb, Popular Mechanics, 1 Sep. 2023
  • Once a sea turtle begins to struggle, the barnacles and algae that latch onto its shell compound the problem.
    — Ryan Brennan, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 12 Mar. 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'barnacle.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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