brae
/bɹeɪ/
More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations
Scotland/bɾe/
brae noun: the sloping bank of a river valley.
Noun
brae (plural braes)
- The sloping bank of a river valley.
- Ye banks, and braes, and ſtreams around / The caſtle of Montgomery, / Green be your woods, and fair your flowers, / Your waters never drumlie!1791, Robert Burns, “Ye Banks, and Braes, and Streams around. Air.—Katharine Ogie.”, in Songs, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, volume IV, Kilmarnock, Scotland: […] James M‘Kie, published 1886...
- Was it not Wat the Devil, who drove all the year-old hogs off the braes of Lanthorn-side, in the very recent days of my grandfather's father?1817 December 31 (indicated as 1818), [Walter Scott], chapter IV, in Rob Roy. […], volume I, Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Co. […]; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees...
- Any hillside or slope.
- You are directed to the particular part of the brae where the Covenanters stationed themselves, (at the time of my visit it was a field of pasture, on which some cows were quietly feeding,) and the eminence behind, [...]1828 August 1, “A.”, “A Visit to the Covenanters. (Concluded.)”, in The Paisley Magazine, volume I, number 8, Paisley, Renfrewshire: David Dick, →OCLC, page 392
- The carcase was flung down the brae at the back of the house, and the bread was sent after it, and there they both lay untouched, for it was observed that neither cat nor dog would put a tooth in either of them.1850, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, London: H.G. Bohn, page 391
Examples of brae in a sentence
- Degged with dew, dappled with dew / Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through, / Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern, / And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.1881, Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Inversnaid”, in Robert Bridges, editor, Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins: Now First Published […], London...
- By yon bonnie banks, and by yon bonnie braes, / Where the sun shines bright on Loch Lomon', / Where me and my true love were ever wont to gae, / On the bonnie, bonnie banks o' Loch Lomon'.1899, “The Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond”, in Robert Ford, editor, Vagabond Songs and Ballads of Scotland: With Many Old and Familiar...
- The party was in a big bungalow with an enormous brae for a garden.1995, Alan Warner, Morvern Callar, London: Jonathan Cape, →ISBN; republished London: Vintage Books, 2015, →ISBN, page 19:
Forms of brae
| plural | braes |
|---|
Origin of brae
From Middle English bro, bra (“bank of a stream; raised edge of a ditch or pit”), from Old Norse brá (“eyebrow; eyelash”) (probably in the sense of the brow of a hill), from Proto-Germanic *brēwō (“eyebrow”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₃bʰrúHs (“eyebrow”). The English word is cognate with Old English brǣw, brēaw (“eyelid”), Old High German brāwa (Middle High German brā, modern German Braue (“eyebrow”)), Old Saxon brāwa, brāha (“eyebrow; eyelash”); and is a doublet of bree (“(Scotland) brow; forehead; (obsolete or dialectal, Scotland) eyebrow; eyelid”) and brow.
Words formed from brae
- Bellbrae
- braeface
- Braefield
- Braehead
- braeman
- Braemeadows
- Braeside
- Glenbrae
- Gowanbrae
- Heatherbrae
- Logie Brae
- Orchard Brae
- Sunnybrae
- Urrbrae
Words that rhyme with brae
Questions about brae
- What does brae mean?
- Brae means the sloping bank of a river valley.
- How do you use brae in a sentence?
- Degged with dew, dappled with dew / Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through, / Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern, / And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.
- What part of speech is brae?
- Brae is a noun.
- How do you pronounce brae?
- Brae is pronounced /bɹeɪ/ (UK).
- What is the plural of brae?
- The plural of brae is braes.
Words near brae in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: brae (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-brae1.wav.
Cite this entry: “brae.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/brae. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.