Definition of "barnburner" [barn•burn•er]

• Informal An extremely impressive event or successful outcome: "September will not be any barnburner [for car sales]” ( Lee Iacocca). (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "One definition of barnburner is “someone who burns down a barn” but the other definition is “an impressively successful event.”"
• "Calling the race between Shays and Himes a barnburner is interesting by its definition."
• "A close game with high scores is also called a barnburner, a 1960s sports usage based on an old political epithet."