brake

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Contents

English [edit]

Disk brake on a motorcycle.
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Wikipedia

Pronunciation [edit]

Etymology 1 [edit]

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

Noun [edit]

brake (plural brakes)

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

Etymology 2 [edit]

Compare Middle Low German brake.

Noun [edit]

brake (plural brakes)

  1. A thicket, or an area overgrown with briers etc. [from 15th c.]
    • 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 […].

Etymology 3 [edit]

From Old Dutch braeke.

Noun [edit]

brake (plural brakes)

  1. 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.
Translations [edit]

Verb [edit]

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
Derived terms [edit]
Translations [edit]

Etymology 4 [edit]

Origin uncertain.

Noun [edit]

brake (plural brakes)

  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.]
  4. (figuratively) Something used to retard or stop some action, process etc.
  5. The act of braking, of using a brake to slow down a machine or vehicle
  6. A baker's kneading trough.
    (Can we find and add a quotation of Johnson to this entry?)
  7. A frame for confining a refractory horse while the smith is shoeing him.
  8. An enclosure to restrain cattle, horses, etc.
    • J. Brende
      A horse [] which Philip had bought [] and because of his fierceness kept him within a brake of iron bars.
  9. That part of a carriage, as of a movable battery, or engine, which enables it to turn.
  10. (military) An ancient engine of war analogous to the crossbow and ballista.
  11. (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.
  12. A cart or carriage without a body, used in breaking in horses.
Translations [edit]
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.
Derived terms [edit]

Verb [edit]

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.
Translations [edit]
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.

Etymology 5 [edit]

Origin uncertain.

Noun [edit]

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 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.

Etymology 6 [edit]

Inflected forms.

Verb [edit]

brake

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

Anagrams [edit]


Dutch [edit]

Verb [edit]

brake

  1. singular past subjunctive of breken
  2. singular present subjunctive of braken

Anagrams [edit]