Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A fern (Pteridium aquilinum) found worldwide, with large, triangular fronds usually divided into three parts.
- noun An area with dense thickets of this fern.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A fern, especially the Pteris aquilina and other large ferns. See
brake .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A brake or fern.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Any of several coarse
ferns , ofgenus Pteridium, that forms densethickets ; oftenpoisonous tolivestock - noun An area of
countryside heavily infested with this fern
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun large coarse fern often several feet high; essentially weed ferns; cosmopolitan
- noun fern of southeastern Asia; not hardy in cold temperate regions
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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My childhood passed on foot and outdoors, in bracken and on pebbly beaches.
William Nicholson discusses Seeker, the first volume in a three part trilogy for teens 2010
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You crouch with the wild-birds in bracken and ling,
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It was snowing so fast that she feared that the way to the peat stack would be blocked up, and therefore her next work was, with the help of the two boys, to pull down as much fuel as would last for a week, and carry it indoors; and she examined the potatoes laid up in bracken leaves, but fancying that if she brought them in, the warmth of the cottage would spoil them, she only took enough for a single meal.
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A well-known writer, who lives where ferns abound, says that the bracken is the fern of ferns in the British Islands.
Chatterbox, 1905. Various
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The undergrowth was gorgeous: bramble, elder, honeysuckle, briony, rowan, and alder vied with one another in the vividness of their crimson and orange, while the bracken was a sea of pale gold.
The Luckiest Girl in the School Angela Brazil 1907
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Not one of them knew which portion of the bracken was to be his own.
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In some areas, the land has become degraded to the point where crops cannot be planted, and it becomes secondary grassland or is simply invaded by weeds, such as bracken (Pteridium).
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Ferns from the wild such as bracken can be used or house plant species such as the bird's nest fern are also suitable.www. lifeunearthed.co.uk
WN.com - Articles related to Kill weeds with help from the sun 2010
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Ferns from the wild such as bracken can be used or house plant species such as the bird's nest fern are also suitable.www. lifeunearthed.co.uk
WN.com - Articles related to Kill weeds with help from the sun 2010
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In high summer, grappling fronds of bracken grow to chest-height, encroaching on rich grassland like an invading army.
yarb commented on the word bracken
Surprised to see this on arby's list of Britlish. What's the American word?
I grew up surrounded by this stuff (Weirdnet makes no sense as usual) and spent summers hacking it down with stick and scythes and autumn weekends inhaling its carcinogenic spores.
November 30, 2007
arby commented on the word bracken
According to Mencken, we call them ferns. (I've never heard bracken used over here.) I associate this word with Scotland and heath for some reason.
November 30, 2007
byra commented on the word bracken
To me, the word bracken conjures up images of sea serpents and Grecian mythology. I've only ever heard of these plants being called ferns.
November 30, 2007
sionnach commented on the word bracken
I think the sea serpents might be kraken. We have bracken in Ireland as well, mainly in the bogs. It was also the name of a TV soap opera.
December 1, 2007
bilby commented on the word bracken
All together now! We sometimes refer to these plants as bracken fern in Australia. Possibly to distinguish them from other types of fern, eg. tree fern, maidenhair fern, cell fern, etc.
December 1, 2007
chained_bear commented on the word bracken
One of my favorite first lines of any book is this--and the last time I read it was 1988, so imagine the impression it left on me then:
"Gavin Cameron, who was eleven years old and would one day become Bishop of Scotland, pulled his dagger from between the man's ribs and wiped it clean on the bracken."
That's all I know about bracken. Wow! (From Reay Tannahill, The World, the Flesh, and the Devil, which I won't ever read again for fear it will suck.)
December 1, 2007
reesetee commented on the word bracken
In cadence, that reminds me of one of my favorite first lines (which has nothing to do with bracken), from One Hundred Years of Solitude:
"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."
December 2, 2007