Word.ws English Dictionary

brank

/ˈbɹæŋk/US/ˈbɹeɪ̯ŋk/

brank noun: a metal bridle formerly used as a torture device to hold the head of a scold and restrain the tongue.

Noun (1)

brank (plural branks)

  1. (plural-normally) A metal bridle formerly used as a torture device to hold the head of a scold and restrain the tongue.
  2. (Scotland, UK, dialectal, obsolete, plural-normally) A sort of bridle with wooden side pieces.
    • Your armour gude ye mauna shaw, / Nor yet appear like men o' weir; / As country lads be a' array'd, / Wi' branks and brecham on each mare.1802, “Jock o’ the Side”, in Walter Scott, editor, Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border: […], volume I, Kelso, Roxburghshire: […] James Ballantyne, for T[homas] Cadell Jun. and W[illiam] Davies, […]...

Verb

brank (third-person singular simple present branks, present participle branking, simple past and past participle branked)

  1. To put someone in the branks.
  2. (Scotland, UK, dialectal) To hold up and toss the head; applied to horses as spurning the bit.
  3. (Scotland) To prance; to caper.
    • Donald came branking down the brae
      Wi' twenty thousand men.1811, Anne MacVicar Grant, Essays on the Superstitions of the Highlanders of Scotland

Noun (2)

brank (uncountable)

  1. (UK, dialectal) Buckwheat.
    • One - third of brank-ground , or mixed with any other kind of grain or roots, is as large a proportion as can be given with safety1842, William Blackwood, The Quarterly Journal of Agriculture

Forms of brank

Noun
pluralbranks
Verb
third-person singular presentbranks
present participlebranking
past participlebranked
pastbranked

Origin of brank

Compare Scottish Gaelic brangus, brangas (“a sort of pillory”), Irish brancas (“halter”), or Dutch pranger (“fetter”).

Probably of Celtic origin; compare Latin brance, brace, the Gallic name of a particularly white kind of corn.

Words formed from brank

Phrases with brank

Words that rhyme with brank

34 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about brank

What does brank mean?
Brank means a metal bridle formerly used as a torture device to hold the head of a scold and restrain the tongue.
What part of speech is brank?
Brank can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce brank?
Brank is pronounced /ˈbɹæŋk/.
What is the plural of brank?
The plural of brank is branks.

Words near brank in the dictionary

  1. branigger
  2. braniggers
  3. Branimir
  4. Branislau
  5. Braniștea
  6. brank
  7. brank new
  8. branked
  9. branking
  10. branks
  11. Branksome

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: brank (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-brank.wav.

Cite this entry: “brank.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/brank. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.