Meaning
Making a whirlwind tour of rallies, speeches, matches or performances, playing town after town with high energy and showmanship; the political sense describes candidates sweeping through a region campaigning hard. As an adjective it rates any rousing display, as in a barnstorming speech. Historically it named itinerant theatre troupes playing rural barns and, in the 1920s, stunt pilots flying from farm to farm. Now chiefly figurative - a barnstorming performance, speech or tour - and applied to musicians and athletes as much as politicians. The aviation sense is historical; barnstormer survives in sports pages and in baseball history for exhibition tours. Regional use: American English.
Origin
Born in the theatre: Etymonline dates barnstorm to 1815, a term for itinerant performers 'taking by storm' the barns that served as playhouses in rural upstate New York. The OED's record is later: barnstormer from 1845 and the verb from 1847 - strikingly, in the Colonial Times of Hobart, Van Diemen's Land - with theatrical senses filed in the 1840s. The OED traces extensions to politics and sport in the 1890s; Etymonline specifies electioneering tours by 1896, the era of candidates touring by rail, and stunt pilots by the late 1920s, when ex-servicemen bought surplus Curtiss JN-4 Jenny trainers cheaply and staged shows at fairs (Wikipedia's Barnstorming article covers the aviation era; Charles Lindbergh began as a barnstormer, and regulation under the 1926 Air Commerce Act killed the trade). The figurative sense - a barnstorming performance or speech - has dominated since the mid-twentieth century.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- barnstorm tour
- barnstormer
- barnstormers
Usage Examples
- In the final week she barnstormed through seven swing states, holding six rallies a day before roaring crowds.
- The president delivered a barnstorming speech to a packed arena, leaving even hostile commentators reaching for superlatives.
- The band spent the autumn barnstorming across the Midwest, playing a different small town every night.