brake

• enPR: brāk, IPA^(key): /bɹeɪk/

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• Rhymes: -eɪk
• Homophone: break

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

brake (plural brakes)

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

Compare Middle Low German brake.

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 […]

   • Shakespeare

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

   • Sir Walter Scott

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

From Old Dutch braeke.

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.

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

Disk brake on a motorcycle.

Origin uncertain.

• break (rare)

brake (plural brakes)

1. (military) An ancient engine of war analogous to the crossbow and ballista.
   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.]
   1. The act of braking, of using a brake to slow down a machine or vehicle
   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.
4. A baker's kneading trough.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Johnson to this entry?)

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.

      • J. Brende

        A horse […] which Philip had bought […] and because of his fierceness kept him within a brake of iron bars.

   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
      • 1898, Winston Churchill, chapter 8, in The Celebrity:

        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.

• Portuguese: breque

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.

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

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

Origin 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 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.

Inflected forms.

brake

1. (archaic) simple past tense of break
   • Exodus 32:3, KJV:

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

• Abrek, Baker, baker, barke, break

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brake

1. (archaic) singular past subjunctive of breken
2. (archaic) singular present subjunctive of braken

• baker