brank

English edit

Compare Gaelic brangus, brangas, a sort of pillory, Irish brancas, halter, or Dutch pranger, fetter.

brank (plural branks)

(usually in the plural) A metal bridle formerly used as a torture device to hold the head of a scold and restrain the tongue.
(obsolete, UK, Scotland, dialect, usually in the plural) A sort of bridle with wooden side pieces.
- 1802, “Jock o’ the Side”, in Walter Scott, editor, Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border: […], volume I, Kelso, Roxburghshire: […] James Ballantyne, for T[homas] Cadell Jun. and W[illiam] Davies, […]; and sold by Manners and Miller, and A[rchibald] Constable, […], →OCLC, 1st part (Historical Ballads), page 158:
  Your armour gude ye mauna shaw, / Nor yet appear like men o' weir; / As country lads be a' array'd, / Wi' branks and brecham on each mare.

brank (third-person singular simple present branks, present participle branking, simple past and past participle branked)

To put someone in the branks.
(UK, Scotland, dialect) To hold up and toss the head; applied to horses as spurning the bit.
(Scotland) To prance; to caper.
- 1811, Anne MacVicar Grant, Essays on the Superstitions of the Highlanders of Scotland:
  Donald came branking down the brae
  Wi' twenty thousand men.

Probably of Celtic origin; compare Latin brance, brace, the Gallic name of a particularly white kind of corn.

brank (uncountable)

(UK, dialect) Buckwheat.
- 1842, William Blackwood, The Quarterly Journal of Agriculture:
  One - third of brank-ground , or mixed with any other kind of grain or roots, is as large a proportion as can be given with safety