Brake

Pronunciation

• enPR: brāk, IPA: /bɹeɪk/
• Rhymes: -eɪk
• Homophones: break

Apparently a shortened form of bracken. (Compare chick, chicken.)

Full definition of brake

Noun

1. A fern; bracken. from 14th c.

Compare Middle Low German brake.

Noun

1. A thicket, or an area overgrown with briers etc. from 15th c.
• 1807, William Wordsworth, PoemsHe halts, and searches with his eyesAmong the scatter'd rocks:And now at distance can discernA stirring in a brake of fern ...
• ShakespeareRounds rising hillocks, brakes obscure and rough,
  To shelter thee from tempest and from rain.
• Sir Walter ScottHe stayed not for brake, and he stopped not for stone.

From Old Dutch braeke.

Noun

1. A tool used for breaking flax or hemp. from 15th c.
2. A type of machine for bending sheet metal. (See .)
3. A large, heavy harrow for breaking clods after ploughing; a drag.

Verb

1. (transitive) To bruise and crush; to knead''The farmer's son brakes the flax while mother brakes the bread dough
2. (transitive) To pulverise with a harrow

Derived terms

• brakeage

Origin uncertain.

Noun

1. (military) An ancient engine of war analogous to the crossbow and ballista.
1. (obsolete) The winch of a crossbow. 14th-19th c.
2. (chiefly nautical) The handle of a pump.
3. A device used to slow or stop the motion of a wheel, or of a vehicle, by friction; also, the controls or apparatus used to engage such a mechanism such as the pedal in a car. from 18th c.
1. The act of braking, of using a brake to slow down a machine or vehicle
2. (engineering) An apparatus for testing the power of a steam engine or other motor by weighing the amount of friction that the motor will overcome; a friction brake.
3. (figuratively) Something used to retard or stop some action, process etc.
4. A baker's kneading trough.
5. A device used to confine or prevent the motion of an animal.
1. A frame for confining a refractory horse while the smith is shoeing him.
2. An enclosure to restrain cattle, horses, etc.
• 1868, March 7, The Illustrated London News, number 1472, volume 52, “Law and Police”, page 223:He was shooting, and the field where the cock-fighting ring was verged on the shooting-brake where the rabbits were.
• J. BrendeA horse...which Philip had bought...and because of his fierceness kept him within a brake of iron bars.
3. A cart or carriage without a body, used in breaking in horses.

1. A carriage for transporting shooting parties and their equipment.

• 1898, Winston Churchill, The Celebrity Chapter 8, It had been arranged as part of the day's programme that Mr. Cooke was to drive those who wished to go over the Rise in his new brake.
• 1976, Terrance Dicks, Doctor Who and the Loch Ness Monster Chapter 1, A few moments later they heard the sound of an engine, and a muddy shooting brake appeared on the road behind them.
1. That part of a carriage, as of a movable battery, or engine, which enables it to turn.

Derived terms

Descendants

• Portuguese:

Verb

1. (intransitive) To operate (a) brake(s).
2. (intransitive) To be stopped or slowed (as if) by braking.

Origin uncertain.

Noun

1. (obsolete) A cage. 16th-17th c.
2. (now historical) A type of torture instrument. from 16th c.
• 2011, Thomas Penn, Winter King, Penguin 2012, p. 83:Methods of applying pain were many and ingenious, in particular the ways of twisting, stretching and manipulating the body out of shape, normally falling under the catch-all term of the rack, or the brakes.

Inflected forms.

Verb

1. (archaic)

   brake

   (past of break)
• Exodus 32:3, KJV:And all the people brake off the golden earrings ...

Anagrams

• baker, Baker
• break