Definitions

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

  • noun A child, especially a spoiled or ill-mannered one.
  • noun A child of a career military person.
  • noun A bratwurst.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A local English name of the turbot.
  • noun A child: now used only in contempt: as, “this brat is none of mine,”
  • noun “their dirty brats,”
  • noun A coarse mantle or cloak.
  • noun A child's bib or apron.
  • noun A clout; a rag.
  • noun The film on the surface of some liquids, as on boiled milk when cold.

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

  • noun obsolete A coarse garment or cloak; also, coarse clothing, in general.
  • noun Prov. Eng. & Scot. A coarse kind of apron for keeping the clothes clean; a bib.
  • noun A child; an offspring; -- formerly used in a good sense, but now usually in a contemptuous sense.
  • noun obsolete The young of an animal.
  • noun (Mining) A thin bed of coal mixed with pyrites or carbonate of lime.

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

  • noun A child (as a pejorative term); offspring.
  • noun Now often specifically, a selfish or spoiled child.
  • noun mining A thin bed of coal mixed with pyrites or carbonate of lime.
  • noun bratwurst

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

  • noun a small pork sausage
  • noun a very troublesome child

Etymologies

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

[Possibly from brat, coarse garment, from Middle English, from Old English bratt, of Celtic origin.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Origin uncertain. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the term "brat" derives from an Old English (Old English) slang term meaning "beggar's child". Originally a northern, Midlands and western England dialect word for "makeshift or ragged garment;" probably the same word as Old English bratt "cloak," which is from a Celtic source (cf. O.Ir. bratt "cloak, cloth").

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Shortened from bratwurst, from the German Bratwurst

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Examples

Comments

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  • Means "brother" in Russian.

    July 13, 2009

  • Cf. definitions of bratchet. One wonders if that word figures in the uncertain etymology of brat.

    January 4, 2012