brainish

Adjective

brainish (comparative more brainish, superlative most brainish)

1. (obsolete) hot-headed; furious
   • And, in this brainish apprehension, kills / The unseen good old man.c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac...
   • I had slain a man, Even thy sone, Amphidamas, whom, unwittingly of life I reft In a brainish moment, foolishly, when we quarrelled o'er the dice;1850, Aeschylus, translated by John Stuart Blackie, The Lyrical Dramas of Aeschylus, from the Greek, page 104
2. (obsolete) Purely the work of the imagination, without serious meaning.
   • For the third, because the worke might in truth be iudged brainish, if nothing but amorous humor were handled therein, I haue inter-wouen matters historicall, which unexplaned, might defraud the mind of much content, as for example, in Queene Margarites Epistle to William de-la-Poole.1613, Michael Drayton, Poems: by Michael Drayton, Esquire, page 161
   • It is a folly–nothing, a mere thought, A brainish fancy.1836, John Ruskin, Marcolini
3. Cerebral; intellectual rather than physical or emotional.
   • That such existences there are, I know; For, whether by the corporal organ framed, Or painted by a brainish fantasy Upon the inner sense, not once nor twice, But sundry times, have I beheld such things Since my tenth year, and most in this last past.1834, Henry Taylor, Philip van Artevelde; a Dramatic Romance
   • Will ye still pluck our christian belief from the right hand of God, the eternal Father, and send it to a box of your brainish devising ?1849, John Bale, The First Examination of the Worthy Servant of God, Mistress Anne Askewe
4. Intellectual; highly intelligent.
   • I think we shall win. Pig 22, who is the first pusher for those who wish to abolish forks, is a highly lunatised and brainish wug.1959, Compton Mackenzie, The Lunatic Republic, page 202
   • "Oh, has thou solved the integral? Here is a raise, my brainish boy!" He threw his time cards in the air And clapped his hands with joy.1960 May, Hilbert Schenck Jr., “Wockyjabber”, in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
5. Neurological; concerning the brain and nervous system.
   • According to them, any genuine entities or processes of which we may speak in mentalistic terms may be (as Place holds) and very probably are (as Smart holds) just physiological ones of a neural or brainish sort .1967, Charles Frederick Presley, The Identity Theory of Mind, page 21
   • In the early days of the cognitive revolution against the reigning ideas of behaviourism, the brainish beginnings of the movement – in the work of such pioneers as Norbert Wiener and WarrenMcCulloch– were swept aside by an ideology that called for ever higher levels of abstraction.1992, New Scientist - Volume 134, page 48
6. Brain-like.
   • That is, his beliefs about the physical world (including, I think it must be admitted, even the belief that conscious experience can only emerge, somehow, from an appropriately brainish sort of physical object) are entirely arbitrary.2016, Mary Bell, Shan Gao, Quantum Nonlocality and Reality: 50 Years of Bell's Theorem, page 214