late 14c., "incapacity for child-bearing" (of women); "unproductivity, unfruitfulness" (of land); earlier in a figurative sense ("spiritual emptiness," mid-14c.); from barren + -ness.
Entries linking to barrenness
barren adj.
c. 1200, "incapable of producing its kind" (of female animals, plants), from Old French baraigne, baraing "sterile, barren" (12c.), perhaps originally brahain, a word of obscure derivation, possibly from a Germanic language. Its use in reference to males is rare. Of land, "producing little or no vegetation," by late 14c.
As a noun from mid-13c., "a barren woman;" later "tract of more or less unproductive land."
BARRENS. Elevated lands, or plains upon which grow small trees, but never timber. [Bartlett, "Dictionary of Americanisms," 1848]
-ness
word-forming element denoting action, quality, or state, attached to an adjective or past participle to form an abstract noun, from Old English -nes(s), from Proto-Germanic *in-assu- (cognates: Old Saxon -nissi, Middle Dutch -nisse, Dutch -nis, Old High German -nissa, German -nis, Gothic -inassus), from *-in-, originally belonging to the noun stem, + *-assu-, abstract noun suffix, probably from the same root as Latin -tudo (see -tude).