Brake (meanings)

The word brake exists as an adjective, a noun and a verb. The general meaning of all of them in current English is usually 'slow down' or 'stop', but over history, the spellings brake and break have both been used for some six other nouns, one adjective and five verbs with the principal spelling brake listed in OED and for the two nouns and one verb with the current spelling break (~ 'fracture'), for which see break (meanings). For example, of two meanings recorded in OED (1888) for the derived noun breakage , the first, "The action of a brake in stopping a train", is listed under the headword brakeage | breakage, n.; the second - current - meaning, "the action or fact of breaking" (only listed as breakage), is not recorded before 1813. (Some writers confuse the homophones brake and break. This is an error in current English. Because of this homophony, several of the meanings of brake seem to have been influenced by the meaning of break - the adjective brake (Obs[olete] rare), whose etymology in OED is " ? < break v.", means 'fragile', or 'breakable'.

• Users of AWE such as students of literature or history, who may come cross some of the other, less current, meanings of these words may like to consult the following on some of the less familiar meanings. For a comprehensive view of all of them, see OED, or another good historical dictionary.
  • Brake was the standard past tense form of the irregular verb 'to break', which is now always broke, until Early Modern English. For example, the Authorized Version (1611) translates (Mark, 14, 22-4) about the Last Supper, "Jesus took bread, and blessed, and brake it, and gave to them, and said, Take, eat: this is my body."
  • A brake (noun) can be:
    • a form of bracken (now obsolete and dialect) , with which it may be cognate. This may perhaps be the same word as
    • a clump of bushes, or thicket;

Several meanings of brake refer to tools, or parts of tools. Some seem to have been influenced by break, including:

• • • a toothed instrument used for braking flax or hemp, etc (separating the useful fibres from the woody stems), kneading bread etc, or harrowing clods after ploughing. This is a case where brake (as noun and verb) and break are confused, as can be seen in "The retted stems are rinsed and dried before breaking them with a flax-brake", from the 'Spinning & Weaving with Natural Fibres' website [[1]].
    • a lever or handle, as in the winch of a crossbow (historically a 'bow of brake'); the handle of a pump; or part of a boring machine used in coal-mines.
    • a minimal chassis with four wheels, used to break (tame, or discipline) a horse to work with wagons, chariots, carriages etc. A shooting brake, a later development from this, was a wagonette with two benches facing each other used to take shooting parties to their stations, and later an early name for the motor car known as an 'estate car' in British English, and 'station wagon' in American English.
    • a form of bridle or curb, used (as above) for breaking horses; later specifically a hinged instrument clamping the nose of a horse to quieten it. The word was later used as a name for the rack, the instrument of torture. This development is paralleled in 'barnacle', a diminutive of the Old French bernac, a form of pincers for the nose of a horse, then a form of pincers for torture of human prisoners applied to nose, tongue etc (and finally a slang term for spectacles).
    • a cage or figuratively a trap; later a framework such as one to hold a horse's leg steady for shoeing, or to hold a hot metal plate while being shaped in a shipbuilding yard. It may be this meaning that in the sixteenth century came to be used as a name for the rack.