Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A thin wire nail with a small head or a slight side projection instead of a head.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A slender flat nail having, instead of a head, a slight projection on one side. It is used when it is desirable that the head should not project, as in joinery, cabinet-work, and pattern-makers' work.
  • To nail with brads.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A thin nail, usually small, with a slight projection at the top on one side instead of a head; also, a small wire nail, with a flat circular head; sometimes, a small, tapering, square-bodied finishing nail, with a countersunk head.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A thin, small nail, with a slight projection at the top on one side instead of a head, or occasionally with a small domed head, similar to that of an escutcheon pin.
  • noun US A paper fastener, a fastening device formed of thin, soft metal, such as shim brass, with a round head and a flat, split shank, which is spread after insertion in a hole in a stack of pages, in much the same way as a cotter pin or a split rivet.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb fasten with brads
  • noun a small nail

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old Norse broddr, spike.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Late Middle English, variant of brod(d), from Old Norse broddr ‘spike, shaft’, from Proto-Germanic *bruzdaz (compare Old English brord, Old High German brort), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰrusdʰos (compare Welsh brath ‘sting, prick’, Albanian bredh ("fir-tree"), Lithuanian bruzdùklis ‘bridle’, Czech brzda ‘brake’).

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