brank
English
editPronunciation
edit- IPA(key): /bɹæŋk/
Audio (Southern England): (file) - Rhymes: -æŋk
Etymology 1
editCompare Gaelic brangus, brangas, a sort of pillory, Irish brancas, halter, or Dutch pranger, fetter.
Noun
editbrank (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.
Verb
editbrank (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.
Derived terms
editEtymology 2
editProbably of Celtic origin; compare Latin brance, brace, the Gallic name of a particularly white kind of corn.
Noun
editbrank (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
References
edit- “brank”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
Anagrams
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- English 1-syllable words
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- Rhymes:English/æŋk
- Rhymes:English/æŋk/1 syllable
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- en:Buckwheat family plants
- en:Torture