Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A device consisting of a metal frame for the head and a bit to restrain the tongue, formerly used to punish scolds.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Buckwheat.
- To make a show or fine appearance; parnk.
- To hold up the head affectedly.
- noun Confusion.
- noun See
branks . - noun A kind of dance.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- intransitive verb Scot. & Prov. Eng. To hold up and toss the head; -- applied to horses as spurning the bit.
- intransitive verb Scot. To prance; to caper.
- noun Scot. & Prov. Eng. A sort of bridle with wooden side pieces.
- noun A scolding bridle, an instrument formerly used for correcting scolding women. It was an iron frame surrounding the head and having a triangular piece entering the mouth of the scold.
- noun Local, Eng. Buckwheat.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun usually in the plural A metal
bridle formerly used as atorture device to hold the head of ascold and restrain thetongue - verb To put someone in the
branks - verb UK, Scotland, dialect To hold up and toss the head; applied to horses as spurning the
bit . - verb Scotland To
prance ; tocaper .
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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The work's title, Brank & Heckle, refers to a brank, a 16th-century iron muzzle used to silence women offenders, and hecklers, first thought to refer to 19th-century Dundee mill workers who, while heckling combing out flax would, like the artist, give surreptitious voice to dissent.
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It was called the brank or scold's bridle, and probably came to us from
Vanishing England 1892
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An instrument of punishment formerly much used in England, but never, we think, introduced into this country, called the "brank," or "scold's bridle," or "gossip's bridle," is thus described by Mr.L. Jewitt,
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And, speaking of contempt, there is no restoring the reputation of an administration that has scrupulously sought to sabotage the Bill of Rights, and Geneva, as well as destroy evidence of what can only be called war crimes by U.S. military personnel, acts of torture that were not merely approved, but orchestrated, by the executive brank, as this latest report from the bipartisan Senate Armed Services Committee establishes.
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At one time, diabolical machines were devised for torture: from the brank, the brazen bull, and the breaking wheel to the heretic's fork, the instep borer and the iron maiden.
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"He that would know the operation of the herbs must look up to the stars astrologically," says this master; and so to him briony is "a furious martial plant," and brank ursine "an excellent plant under the dominion of the moon."
Apologia Diffidentis 1905
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A brank certainly in one recorded case cured a woman from coarse invective and abuse.
Vanishing England 1892
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Frane and Spain were upon the brank of open war when Philip arrived in England.
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 10 John [Editor] Rudd 1885
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Down below, a mass of brank-ursine formed as it were a pedestal, from the midst of which sprang scarlet geum, rhodanthe with stiff petals, and clarkia with great white carved crosses, that looked like the insignia of some barbarous order.
La faute de l'Abbe Mouret ��mile Zola 1871
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Dr. Henry Heginbotham, of Stockport, England, says in speaking of the brank preserved in that town: "There is no evidence of its having been actually used for many years; but there is testimony to the fact that within the last forty years the brank was brought to a termagant market-woman, who was effectually silenced by its threatened application."
hernesheir commented on the word brank
Buck wheat, called in some counties crap --definition from Grose's A Provincial Glossary. Term recorded in England's Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk counties.
May 4, 2011
ruzuzu commented on the word brank
Yuck.
October 23, 2012