breech

From Middle English breche, from Old English brēċ, from Proto-Germanic *brōkiz pl, from Proto-Germanic *brōks (“clothing for loins and thighs”). Cognate with Dutch broek, Alemannic German Brüch, Swedish brok.

• (UK, US) IPA^(key): /bɹiːtʃ/
• Rhymes: -iːtʃ
• Homophone: breach

breech (countable and uncountable, plural breeches)

1. (historical, now only in the plural) A garment whose purpose is to cover or clothe the buttocks. [from 11th c.]
2. (now rare) The buttocks or backside. [from 16th c.]
   • 1624, John Smith, Generall Historie, in Kupperman 1988, p. 157:

     And he made a woman for playing the whore, sit upon a great stone, on her bare breech twenty-foure houres, onely with corne and water, every three dayes, till nine dayes were past […]

   • 1736, Alexander Pope, Bounce to Fop:

     When pamper'd Cupids, bestly Veni's, / And motly, squinting Harvequini's, / Shall lick no more their Lady's Br—, / But die of Looseness, Claps, or Itch; / Fair Thames from either ecchoing Shoare / Shall hear, and dread my manly Roar.

   • 1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, Book III ch viii

     "Oho!" says Thwackum, "you will not! then I will have it out of your br—h;" that being the place to which he always applied for information on every doubtful occasion.

3. The part of a cannon or other firearm behind the chamber. [from 16th c.]
4. (nautical) The external angle of knee timber, the inside of which is called the throat.
5. A breech birth.

• breech-loading

breech (not comparable)

1. With the hips coming out before the head.

breech (not comparable)

1. Born, or having been born, breech.

breech (third-person singular simple present breeches, present participle breeching, simple past and past participle breeched)

1. (dated, transitive) To dress in breeches. (especially) To dress a boy in breeches or trousers for the first time.
   • 1748-1832, Jeremy Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Volume 10:

     […] it occurred before I was breeched, and I was breeched at three years and a quarter old;

   • Macaulay

     A great man […] anxious to know whether the blacksmith's youngest boy was breeched.

2. (dated, transitive) To beat or spank on the buttocks.
3. (transitive) To fit or furnish with a breech.

   to breech a gun

4. (transitive) To fasten with breeching.
5. (poetic, transitive, obsolete) To cover as if with breeches.
   • Shakespeare

     Their daggers unmannerly breeched with gore.

• breeches

• Becher