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This refers to an unpleasant experience, often involving physical or verbal assaults from other people. This is often used in the expression "(one's) time in the barrel" or "turn in the barrel", with the implication that other persons have to go through this experience as well, and now it is one's own turn.

This expression has apparently been frequently used by persons in the armed services, for example:

- used of US troops in Viet Nam under a long artillery siege - used by astronauts to refer to press appearances and conferences, which they disliked - used by a veteran of the Australian Navy to refer to sexual assaults and harassment of newer recruits

Other uses (including uses in fiction) have included being in jail, being investigated by the police, working the front desk at an FBI office, being subject to academic criticism, facing difficult audiences on the country music circuit, and having one's stolen emails exposed to public view.

The origin of this expression is not clear. A person born in southern Indiana in 1922 reported that when he was a child, a game called "your turn in the barrel" involved one child standing in a barrel while the other children stood in a circle around him attempting to hit him by throwing dirt, fruit, and the like.

There is a "joke" about sailors taking turns in a barrel providing sexual gratification to their entire company, but this may postdate the term.

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