1

When they affect the belly, they may be restrained by a bracer, without much trouble.

Wiseman. 2. A medicine of constringent power. BRACn. s. [braque, Fr.] A bitch hound. Truth's a dog must to kennel; he must be whipped out, when the lady brach may stand by the fire, and stink. Shakspeare. BRACHIAL. adj. [from brachium, an arm, Lat] Belonging to the arm. BRACHY'GRAPHY. n. s. Baxús short, and yeaqw to write.] The art or practice of writing in a short compass.

All the certainty of those high pretenders, bating what they have of the first principles, and the word of God, may be circumscribed by as small a circle as the creed when brachygraphy had confined it within the compass of a penny. Glanville.

BRACK. n. s. [from break.] A breach; a broken part

The place was but weak, and the bracks fair; but the defendants, by resolution, supplied all Hayward. the defects.

Let them compare my work with what is taught in the schools: and if they find in theirs many bracks and short ends, which cannot be spun into an even piece; and, in mine, a fair coherence throughout; I shall promise myself an acquiescence. Digby. BRACKET. 7. S. [a term of carpentry. A piece of wood fixed for the support of something.

Let your shelves be laid upon brackets, being about two feet wide, and edged with a small lath. Mortimer.

BRACKISH. adj. [brack, Dutch.] Sait; somewhat salt: it is used particularly of the water of the sea.

Pits upon the sea shore turn into fresh water, by percolation of the salt through the sand; but it is farther noted, after a time, the water in such pits will become brackish again.

When I had gain'd the brow and top, A lake of brackish waters on the ground Was all I found.

Bacon.

Herbert.

Telling the bushes that thou look'st for wars, And wilt not come? Shakspeare. Mark me, with what violence she first loved the Moor, but for bragging, and telling her fantastical lies. Shakspeare. In bragging out some of their private tenets, as if they were the established doctrine of the church of England. Sanderson.

The rebels were grown so strong there, that they intended then, as they already bragged, to come over and make this the seat of war. Clarend

Mrs. Bull's condition was looked upon as desperate by all the men of art; but there were those that bragged they had an infallible vintArbuthnot.

ment.

2. It has of before the thing boasted. Knowledge being the only thing whereof we poor old men can brag, we cannot make it known but by utterance. Sidney.

Verona orags of him.

To be a virtuous and well-govern'd youth. Sbak.
Every busy little scribbler now
Swells with the praises which he gives himself;
And, taking sanctuary in the crowd,
Brags of his impudence, and scorns to mend.
Roscommon

3. On is used, but improperly.

Yet lo! in me what authors have to brag on, Reduc'd at last to hiss in my own dragon. Pope. BRAG. n. 5. [from the verb.] I. A boast; a proud expression. A kind of conquest

2.

Cæsar made here; but made not here his brag Of came, and saw, and overcame. Shakspeare.

It was such a new thing for the Spaniards to receive so little hurt, upon dealing with the English, as Avellaneda made great brags of it, for no greater matter than the waiting upon the English afar off. Bacon

The thing boasted.

Milton.

Beauty is nature's brag, and must be shewn In courts, at feasts, and high solemnities, Where most may wonder. BRAGGADO'CIo. n. s. [from brag.] A puffing, swelling, boasting fellow.

The world abounds in terrible fanfarons, in the masque of men of honour; but these braggadocios are easy to be detected. L'Estrange

By the plot, you may guess much of the cha racters of the persons; a braggadocio captain, a parasite, and a lady of pleasure. Dryden BRAGGARDISM. n. s. [from brag.] Boastfulness; vain ostentation.

Şaltness in a small degree.

All the artificial strainings hitherto leave a brackishness in salt water, that makes it unfit for animal uses. Cheyne BRAD, being an initial, signifies broad, spacious, from the Saxon brad, and the Gothick braid. Gibson. BRAD. n. s. A sort of nail to floor rooms with. They are about the size of a tenpenny nail, but have not their heads made with a shoulder over their shank, as other nails, but are made pretty thick towards the upper end, that the very top may be driven into, and buried in, the board they nail down; so that the tops of these brads will not catch the thrums of the mops, when the floor is washing.

Moxon.

To BRAG. v. n. [braggeren, Dutch.] 1. To boast; to display ostentatiously; to tell boastful stories.

Thou coward! art thou bragging to the stars?

vainly ostentatious.

Shall I, none's slave, of high born or rais'd

men

Fear frowns; and my mistress, truth, betray thee To th' huffing, braggart, puft nobility? Donne. BRAGGART. n. s. [from brag.] Á boaster. Who knows himself a braggart Let him fear this; for it will come to pass, That every braggart shall be found an ass. Shakspeare BRA'GGER. n. s. [from brag] A boaster; an ostentatious fellow.

Such as have had opportunity to sound these braggers thoroughly, by having sometimes endured the penance of their sottish company, have found them, in converse, empty and insipid. South.

BRA'GLESS. adj. [from brag ] Without a
boast; without ostentation.
The bruit is, Hector's slain, and by Achilles.-
If it is so, bragless let it be,
Great Hector was as good a man as he.
Shakspeare.

as it may be bragged

Seest not thilk hawthorn stud,

How bragly it begins to bud,

And utter his tender head?

Flora now calleth forth each flower,

And bids him make ready Maia's bower. Spenser. To BRAID. v. a. [bɲædan, Saxon] To weave together.

Close the serpent sly, Insinuating, wove with gordian twine His braided train, and of his fatal guile Gave proof unheeded.

Milton.

Osier wands, lying loosely, may each of them be easily dissociated from the rest; but, when braided into a basket, they cohere strongly. Boyle. A ribband did the braided tresses bind; The rest was loose, and wanton'd in the wind. Dryden. Since in braided gold her foot is bound, And a long trailing manteau sweeps the ground, Her shoe disdains the strect. BRAID. n. s. [from the verb.] A texture;

Gay.

a knot, or complication of something woven together.

Listen where thou art sitting,
Under the glossy, cool, translucent wave,
In twisted braids of lilies knitting

The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair.
Milton.

No longer shall thy comely tresses break In flowing ringlets on thy snowy neck, Or sit behind thy head, an ample round, In graceful braids, with various ribbon bound.

Prior.

BRAID. adj. [To brede, in Chaucer, is to deceive.] An old word, which seems to signify deceitful.

Since Frenchmen are so braid, Marry 'em that will. I'll live and die a maid. Shakspeare. BRAILS. n. s. [sea term.] Small ropes reeved through blocks, which are seized on either side the ties, a little off upon the yard; so that they come down before the sails of a ship, and are fastened at the skirt of the sail to the crengles. Their use is, when the sail is furled acros, to hail up its bunt, that it may the more readily be taken up or let fall. Harris. BRAIN. n. s. [brægen, Sax. breyne, Dutch.]

1. That collection of vessels and organs in the head, from which sense and motion arise.

The brain is divided into cerebrum and cerebel

lam. Cerebrum is that part of the brain which Possesses all the upper and forepart of the cranaum, being separated from the cerebellum by the second process of the dura mater, under which the cerebellum is situated. The substance of the brain is distinguished into outer and inner; the former is called corticalis, cinerea, or glandu isa; the latter, medullaris, alba, or nervea.

Cheseiden.

If I be served such another trick, I'll have my brain ta'en out, and buttered, and give them to a dog for a new year's gift. Shakspeare. That man proportionably hath the largest brain, I did, I confess, somewhat doubt, and conceived it might have failed in birds, especially such as having little bodies, have yet large cranies, and seem to contain much brain, as snipes and woodcocks; but, upon trial, I find it very true. Brown's Palgar Errours.

is placed; therefore taken for the understanding.

The force they are under is a real force, and that of their fate but an imaginary conceived one; the one but in their brains, the other on their shoulders. Hammond.

A man is first a geometrician in his brain, before he be such in his hand. Hale,

3. Sometimes the affections: this is not common, nor proper.

My son Edgar! had he a hand to write this, a heart and brain to breed it in ? Shakspeare. To BRAIN, v.a. [from the noun.] To dash out the brains; to kill by beating out the brains.

Why, as I told thee, 't is a custom with him ith afternoon to sleep; there thou may'st brain him. Shakspears.

Outlaws of nature,

Fit to be shot and brain'd, without a process, To stop infection; that 's their proper death. Dryden.

Next seiz'd two wretches more, and headlong

Behind the arras hearing something stir, He whips his rapier out, and cries, a rat! And in his brainish apprehension, kills The unseen good old man.. Shakspeare. BRAINLESS. adj. [from brain.] Silly; thoughtless; witless.

Some brainless men have, by great travel and labour, brought to pass, that the church is now ashamed of nothing more than of saints. Hooker. If the dull brainless Ajax come safe off, We'll dress him up in voices. Shakspeare. The brainless stripling, who, expell'd the town, Damn'd the stiff college and pedantick gown, Tickel Aw'd by thy name, is dumb. BRA'IN PAN. n. s. [from brain and pan.} The skull containing the brains.

With those huge bellows in his hands, he blows New fire into my head; my brainpan glows.

Dryden. BRA'INSICK. adj. [from brain and sick.] Diseased in the understanding; addle headed; giddy; thoughtless.

Nor once deject the courage of our minds, Because Cassandra's mad; her brainsick raptures Cannot distaste the goodness of a quarrel. Shaks.

They were brainsick men, who could neither endure the government of their king, nor yet thankfully receive the authors of their deliverKnolles.

ance.

BRA'INSICKLY. adv. [from brainsick.] Weakly; headily.

Why, worthy Thane, You do unbend your noble strength, to think So brainsickly of things. Shakspeare. BRA'INSICKNESS. n. s. [from brainsick.] Indiscretion; giddiness.

BRAIT. n. s. [among jewellers.] A rough diamond. Dict.

BRAKE. The preterit of break.

He thought it sufficient to correct the multitude with sharp words, and brake out into this cholerick speech. Kaolies.

BRAKE, n. s. [of uncertain etymology.] 1. A thicket of brambles, or of thorns.

A dog of this town used daily to fetch meat, and to carry the same unto a blind mestiff, that lay in a brak without the town,

Carew.

If I'm traduc'd by tongues, which neither know

My faculties nor person; let me say, "Tis but the fate of place, and the rough brake That virtue must go through. Shakspeare.

In every bush and brake, where hap may find The serpent sleeping. Milton.

Full little thought of him the gentle knight, Who, flying death, had there conceal'd his flight; In brakes and brambles hid, and shunning mortal sight. Dryden's Fables. 2. It is said originally to mean fern.

BRAKE. n. s.

1. An instrument for dressing hemp or flax. 2. The handle of a ship's pump. 3. A baker's kneadingtrough.

4. A sharp bit or snaffle for horses. Dict. A smith's brake is a machine in which horses, unwilling to be shod, are confined during that operation. BRA'KY. adj. [from brake.] Thorny; prickly; rough.

Redeem arts from their rough and braky seats, where they lie hid and overgrown with thorns, to a pure open light, where they may take the eye, and may be taken by the hand. Ben Jonson. BRA'MBLE. n. s. [bremlar, Sax. rubus, Lat.]

1. The blackberry bush; the raspberry bush, or hindberry. Miller.

Content with food which nature freely bred, On wildings and on strawberries they fed: Cornels and bramble berries gave the rest, And falling acorns furnish'd out a feast. Dryden. 2. It is taken, in popular language, for any rough prickly shrub.

The bush my bed, the bramble was my bow'r, The woods can witness many a woful store.

Spenser.

There is a man haunts the forest, that abuses our young plants with carving Rosalind on their barks; hangs odes upon hawthorns, and elegies on brambles; all, forsooth, deifying the name of Rosalind. Shakspeare.

Thy younglings, Cuddy, are but just awake, No thrustles shrill the bramble bush forsake. Gay. BRAMBLING. n. s. A bird, called also a mountain chaffinch. Dict. BRAN. n. s. [brenna, Ital.] The husks of corn ground; the refuse of the sieve. From me do back receive the flow'r of all, And leave me but the bran.

Shakspeare. The citizens were driven to great distress for want of victuals; bread they made of the coarsest bran, moulded in cloths; for otherwise it would not cleave together. Hayward.

In the sifting of fourteen years of power and favour, all that came out could not be pure meal, but must have among it a certain mixture of padar and bran, in this lower age of human fragility. Wotton.

Then water him, and drinking what he can, Encourage him to thirst again with bran. Dryden. BRANCH. n. s. [branche, French.] 1. The shoot of a tree from one of the main boughs.

Why grow the branches, when the root is gone? Why wither not the leaves that want their sap? Shakspeare.

2. Any member or part of the whole; any distinct article; any section or subdivision.

Your oaths are past, and now subscribe your

The belief of this was of special importance to confirm our hopes of another life, on which so many branches of christian piety do immedately depend. Hammond.

In the several branches of justice and charity, comprehended in those general rules, of loving our neighbour as ourselves, and of doing to others as we would have them do to us, there is nothing but what is most fit and reasonable. Tillotson. This precept will oblige us to perform our duty, according to the nature of the various branches of it. Rogers.

3. Any part that shoots out from the rest. And six branches shall come out of the sides of it; three branches of the candlestick out of the one side, and three branches of the candlestick out of the other side. Exodus. His blood, which disperseth itself by the branches of veins, may be resembled to waters carried by brooks. Raleigh. A smaller river running into, or proceeding from, a larger.

4.

5.

If, from a main river, any branch be separated and divided, then, where that branch doth first bound itself with new banks, there is that part of the river, where the branch forsaketh the main stream, called the head of the river. Raleigh.

Any part of a family descending in a

collateral line.

His father, a younger branch of the ancient stock planted in Somersetshire, took to wife the widow. Carew.

6. The offspring; the descendant.
Great Anthony! Spain's well-beseeming pride,
Thou mighty branch of emperours and kings!
Crasbary

7. The antlers or shoots of a stag's horn. 8. The branches of a bridle are two pieces of bended iron, that bear the bit-mouth, the chains, and the curb, in the interval between the one and the other.

Farrier's Dict. 2. [In architecture.] The arches of Gothick vaults; which arches transversing from one angle to another, diagonal wise, form a cross between the other arches, which make the sides of the square, of which the arches are diagonals. Harriss To BRANCH. v. n. [from the noun.] 1. To spread in branches.

They were trained together in their childhoods, and there rooted betwixt them such an affection, which cannot choose but branch now. Shakspeare.

The cause of scattering the boughs, is the hasty breaking forth of the sap; and therefore those trees rise not in a body of any height, but branch near the ground. The cause of the pyramis, is the keeping in of the sap, long before it branch, and the spending of it, when it beginneth to branch, by equal degrees. Bacon

Plant it round with shade
Of laurel, evergreen, and branching plain. Milt.
Straight as a line in beauteous order stood
Of oaks unshorn a venerable wood:
Fresh was the grass beneath, and ev'ry tree
At distance planted, in a due degree,
Their branching arms in air, with equal space,
Stretch'd to their neighbours with a long em-
Dryden.

brace.
One sees her thighs transform'd; another views
Her arms shot out, and branching into boughs.
Addison.

2. To spread into separate and distinct parts and subdivisions.

The Alps at the one end, and the long range of Appenines that passes through the body of it,

ransh out, on all sides, into several different divisions. Addison.

If we would weigh, and keep in our minds, what it is we are considering, that would best instruct us when we should, or should not, branch into farther distinctions. Locke. 3. To speak diffusively, or with the distinction of the parts of a discourse. I have known a woman branch out into a long dissertation upon the edging of a petticoat.

Spectator. 4. To have horns shooting out into antlers. The swift stag from under ground Bore up his branching head.

To BRANCH. V. a.

1. To divide as into branches.

Milton.

The spirits of things animate are all continued within themselves, and are branched into canals, as blood is; and the spirits have not only branches, but certain cells or seats, where the principal spirits do reside. Bacon. 2. To adorn with needlework, representing flowers and sprigs.

In robe of lily white she was array'd, That from her shoulder to her heel down raught, The train whereof loose far behind her stray'd, Branched with gold and pearl, most richly wrought. Spenser. BRANCHER. n. s. [from branch.] 1. One that shoots out into branches.

If their child be not such a speedy spreader and brancher, like the vine, yet he may yield, with a little longer expectation, as useful and more sober fruit than the other. Wotton.

2. [branchier, Fr. In falconry, a young hawk.

I enlarge my discourse to the observation of the eires, the brancher, and the two sorts of lentners. Walton. BRANCHINESS.

12.

s. [from branchy.]

Fulness of branches. BRANCHLESS. adj. [from branch.]

I. Without shoots or boughs.

2. Without any valuable product; naked. If I lose mine honour,

Shakspeare.

I lose myself; better I were not yours, Than yours so branchless. BRANCHY, adj. [from branch.] Full of branches; spreading.

Trees on trees o'erthrown

Fall crackling round him, and the forests groan; Sudden full twenty on the plain are strow'd, And lopp'd and lighten'd of their branchy load.

Pope. What carriage can bear away all the various, rude, and unwieldy loppings of á branchy tree, at once? Watts.

BRAND. n. s. [brand, Saxon.] 1. A stick lighted, or fit to be lighted, in the fire.

Have I caught thee?

He that parts us shall bring a brand from heav'n, And fire us hence. Shakspeare.

Take it, she said, and when your needs require,

This little brand will serve to light your fire. Dryden.

If, with double diligence, they labour to retrieve the hours they have lost, they shall be saved; though this is a service of great difficulty, and like a brand plucked out of the fire. Rogers. 2. [brando, Ital. brandar, Runick.] A sword, in old language.

They looking back, all th' eastern side beheld Of Paradise, so late their happy seat!

The sire omnipotent prepares the brand, By Vulcan wrought, and arms his potent hand. Granville. 4. A mark made by burning a criminal, with a hot iron, to note him as infamous; a stigma.

Clerks convict should be burned in the hand, both because they might taste of some corporal punishment, and that they might carry a brand of infamy. Bacon.

The rules of good and evil are inverted, and a brand of 'infamy passes for a badge of honour. L'Estrange.

5. Any note of infamy.

Where did his wit on learning fix a brand, And rail at arts he did not understand? Dryden, To BRAND. v. a. [branden, Dutch.] To mark with a brand, or note of infamy. Have I liv'd thus long a wife, a true one, Never yet branded with suspicion? Shakspeare. The king was after branded, by Perkin's proclamation, for an execrable breaker of the rights of holy church. Bacon.

Brand not their actions with so foul a name; Pity, at least, what we are forc'd to blame. Dryd. Ha! dare not for thy life, I charge thee, dare

not

To brand the spotless virtue of my prince. Rozve. Our Punick faith

Is infamous, and branded to a proverb. Addison. The spreader of the pardons answered him an easier way, by branding him with heresy. Atterb. BRA'NDGOOSE. n. s. A kind of wild fowl, less than a common goose, having its breast and wings of a dark colour. Dict. To BRANDISH. v. a. [from brand, a sword.]

1. To wave, or shake, or flourish, as a weapon.

Brave Macbeth,

Disdaining fortune, with his brandish'd steel, Like valour's minion, carved out his passage. Shakspeare,

He said, and brandishing at once his blade, With eager pace pursued the flaming shade. Dryden.

Let me march their leader, not their prince: And at the head of your renown'd Cydonians Brandish this sword. Smith.

2. To play with; to flourish.

He, who shall employ all the force of his reason only in brandishing of syllogisms, will discover very little. Locke. BRANDLING. n. s. A particular worm.

The dew-worm, which some also call the lobworm, and the branding, are the chief. Walton. BRANDY.. v. n. s. [contracted from brandeavine, or burnt wine.] A strong liquor distilled from wine.

If your master lodgeth at inns, every dram of brandy extraordinary that you drink, raiseth his character. Swift's Footman. BRANDY-WINE. The same with brands. It has been a common saying, A hair of the same dog; and thought that brandy-wine is a common relief to such. Wiseman. BRANGLE

. . uncertainly derived.] Squabble; wrangle; litigious contest. The payment of tythes is subject to many frauds, brangles, and other difficulties, not only