brake

Definition from Wiktionary, a free dictionary

Jump to: navigation, search
Disk brake on a motorcycle.

Contents

[edit] English

Wikipedia-logo.png
Wikipedia has an article on:

Wikipedia

[edit] Pronunciation

[edit] Etymology 1

Recorded since c. 1440, from Old Dutch braeke (flax brake), from breken (to break) (=modern Dutch), applied to many crushing implements, and the ring through the nose of a draught ox. The word was influenced in sense by Old French brac, a form of bras "an arm, lever or handle", used in English from 1380 and applied to "a bridle or curb" from 1430. One or both took up the main modern meaning of "stopping device for a wheel," first attested 1772.

[edit] Noun

Singular
brake

Plural
brakes

brake (plural brakes)

  1. A device used to slow or stop a vehicle, by friction; often installed on the wheels, then often in the plural.
  2. Something that slows or stops an action
  3. (nautical) The handle, manned by up to six men, by which a ship's pump was worked
  4. A type of machine for bending sheet metal. (See wikipedia.)
  5. (obsolete) A specific torture instrument
[edit] Related terms
[edit] Translations
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Help:How to check translations.

[edit] Verb

Infinitive
to brake

Third person singular
brakes

Simple past
braked

Past participle
braked

Present participle
braking

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

  1. (intransitive) To operate (a) brake(s).
  2. (intransitive) To be stopped or slowed (as if) by braking.
  3. (transitive) To bruise and crush; to knead
    The farmer's son brake the flax while mother brakes the bread dough
  4. (transitive) To pulverise with a harrow
[edit] Derived terms
[edit] Translations
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Help:How to check translations.

[edit] Etymology 2

From Middle English, from braken (bracken).

[edit] Noun

Singular
brake

Plural
brakes

brake (plural brakes)

  1. A fern type, bracken
  2. A canebreak
  3. A thicket, or an area overgrown with briers etc.
    • 1807, William Wordsworth, Poems, Fidelity:
      A barking sound the Shepherd hears,
      A cry as of a Dog or Fox;
      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;
      From which immediately leaps out
      A Dog, and yelping runs about.

[edit] Etymology 3

From break.

[edit] Noun

Singular
brake

Plural
brakes

brake (plural brakes)

  1. A four-wheeled carriage type
[edit] Translations
[edit] Synonyms

[edit] Etymology 4

[edit] Verb

brake

  1. (archaic) Simple past tense and past participle of break.
    • Exodus 32:3, KJV:
      And all the people brake off the golden earrings []

[edit] Anagrams


[edit] Dutch

[edit] Verb form

brake

  1. subjunctive present singular form of braken