brake

• enPR: brāk, IPA^(key): /bɹeɪk/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -eɪk
• Homophone: break

Origin uncertain; possibly from Middle Dutch or Middle Low German brake (“nose ring, curb, flax brake”), which according to Watkins is related to sense 4 and from Proto-Germanic *brekaną (“to break”).

• break (rare)

brake (plural brakes)

1. A device used to slow or stop the motion of a wheel, or of a vehicle, usually by friction (although other resistive forces, such as electromagnetic fields or aerodynamic drag, can also be used); also, the controls or apparatus used to engage such a mechanism such as the pedal in a car. [from 18th c.]

   She slammed the brakes when she saw a child run in front of the car.

   You’re pressing the brakes too hard—try just squeezing them.

   1. The act of braking, of using a brake to slow down a machine or vehicle

      Give the car a quick brake.

   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.
2. (military) An ancient engine of war analogous to the crossbow and ballista.
   1. (obsolete) The winch of a crossbow. [14th–19th c.]
3. (chiefly nautical) The handle of a pump.

   Synonym: swipe

4. A baker’s kneading trough.
   • 1617, Gervase Markham, Cavalarice the English Horseman:

     You shall kneade […] first with handes‥lastly with the brake.

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.

   3. A cart or carriage without a body, used in breaking in horses.^W
   4. A carriage for transporting shooting parties and their equipment.^W
      • 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter VIII, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:

        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, chapter 1, in Doctor Who and the Loch Ness Monster, page 11:

        A few moments later they heard the sound of an engine, and a muddy shooting brake appeared on the road behind them.

6. That part of a carriage, as of a movable battery, or engine, which enables it to turn.

• → Japanese: ブレーキ (burēki)
• → Korean: 브레이크 (beureikeu)
• → Portuguese: breque
• → Swahili: breki
• → Thai: เบรก (brèek)
• → Welsh: brêc

brake (third-person singular simple present brakes, present participle braking, simple past and past participle braked)

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

• (to be stopped or slowed (as if) by braking): See also Thesaurus:stop

• (antonym(s) of “to operate brakes”): floor it, put the pedal to the metal, redline
• (antonym(s) of “to be stopped or slowed (as if) by braking”): accelerate

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

brake (plural brakes)

1. A fern; bracken (Pteridium). [from 14th c.]
2. Any fern in the genus Pteris.

From Old English *bracu, attested in a plural compound form fearnbraca (“thickets of fern”), probably from Proto-Germanic *brekaną (“to break”) and influenced by sense 2 (“fern”). Compare Middle Low German brake (“stump, branch”).

brake (plural brakes)

1. A thicket, or an area overgrown with briers etc. [from 15th c.]
   • 1593, [William Shakespeare], Venus and Adonis, London: […] Richard Field, […], →OCLC:

     Rounds rising hillocks, brakes obscure and rough, / To shelter thee from tempest and from rain.

   • 1808 February 22, Walter Scott, “(please specify the introduction or canto number, or chapter name)”, in Marmion; a Tale of Flodden Field, Edinburgh: […] J[ames] Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Company, […]; London: William Miller, and John Murray, →OCLC:

     He stayed not for brake, and he stopped not for stone.

   • 1807, William Wordsworth, Poems, Fidelity:

     He halts, and searches with his eyes
     Among the scatter’d rocks:
     And now at distance can discern
     A stirring in a brake of fern […]

   • 1859, George Meredith, chapter 5, in The Ordeal of Richard Feverel. A History of Father and Son. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Chapman and Hall, →OCLC:

     The bird, with its fellow in the break, drummed, and whirred, and to the misfortune of its species made its plumage seem a prize to them.

• cypress brake

• Oxford English Dictionary, 1884–1928, and First Supplement, 1933.
• “brake”, in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th edition, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016, →ISBN.

Late Middle English, from Middle Low German brake, Dutch braak, Old Dutch braeke; possibly related to sense 1.

brake (plural brakes)

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

• (textiles) hackle, ripple, scutch, swingle

brake (third-person singular simple present brakes, present participle braking, simple past and past participle braked)

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.

• brakeage

Uncertain.

brake (plural brakes)

1. (obsolete) A cage. [16th–17th c.]
2. (now historical) A type of torture instrument. [from 16th c.]
   • 2011, Thomas Penn, Winter King, Penguin, published 2012, page 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.

brake

1. (archaic) simple past of break
   • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Exodus 32:3:

     And all the people brake off the golden earrings […]

• Abrek, Baker, baker, barke, break

• Audio:

  (file)

brake

1. (dated or formal) singular past subjunctive of breken
2. (dated or formal) singular present subjunctive of braken

• baker

• IPA^(key): /bɾɔːk/

brake

1. simple past of brough
   • 1867, CONGRATULATORY ADDRESS IN THE DIALECT OF FORTH AND BARGY, page 114, lines 12-14:

     az avare ye trad dicke londe yer name waz ee-kent var ee vriene o' livertie, an He fo brake ye neckarès o' zlaves.

     for before your foot pressed the soil, your name was known to us as the friend of liberty, and he who broke the fetters of the slave.

• Jacob Poole (d. 1827) (before 1828) William Barnes, editor, A Glossary, With some Pieces of Verse, of the old Dialect of the English Colony in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland, London: J. Russell Smith, published 1867, page 114