What does barnacle mean?
Word: Barnacle
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: Barnacle means a small sea creature with a hard shell that sticks itself to rocks and the bottoms of ships.
How do you spell barnacle?
Syllables: bar - na - cle
Tricky part: The vowel before the last three letters is unclear when said, so pupils guess and write barnicle. It is an a.
Watch out for: barnicle, barnakle
Memory tip: It is a small miracle that barnacles hold on through crashing waves, and the two words end the same way.
Barnacle in a sentence
Example 1: Hundreds of barnacles had stuck to the hull of the fishing boat.
Example 2: We saw barnacles on the rocks at low tide near Kovalam.
Example 3: Workers scrape barnacles off the bottom of the ship every few years.
Fun Fact
Charles Darwin spent about eight years studying barnacles before he published his famous book on how living things change.
Practise the CREST Way
Word Cookie
Find the extra letter in the word:
barrnacle
a) c
b) r
c) l
d) n
Show answer
b) r. The r comes just once, straight after the first a.
Mingle-Mangle
Form a meaningful word from the jumbled letters:
cbaelnar
a) bangle
b) pinnacle
c) tentacle
d) barnacle
Show answer
d) barnacle. The others need letters such as i, t or g that are not in the jumble.
Word Cookie
Find the misspelt word in the sentence:
A tiny bernacle clung to the side of the wooden jetty.
a) bernacle
b) clung
c) tiny
d) jetty
Show answer
a) bernacle. The word starts with the same three letters as barn.
Spell-o-Spell
Choose the correctly spelt word:
a) barnacle
b) octapus
c) jelyfish
d) lobstar
Show answer
a) barnacle. Jellyfish needs a double l, octopus an o in the middle, and lobster an e near the end.
Multiple Choice Questions
1. Once a young barnacle has settled on a rock, what does it do?
a) buries itself in the sand
b) crawls to a new rock daily
c) swims off each evening
d) stays in the same spot
Show answer
d) stays in the same spot
2. A barnacle's closest relative is ____.
a) a crab
b) a starfish
c) a sea urchin
d) a snail
Show answer
a) a crab
