Word.ws English Dictionary

brat

/bɹæt//bɹɑt/

brat noun: a human child.

Noun (1)

brat (countable and uncountable, plural brats)

  1. (slang, usually negative connotation) A human child.
    • "So... you want to have kids someday?" "Uh... well, yes. I always figured I'd have a couple brats of my own someday..." "That's still doable, you know." "I know, but the process is a lot more complicated and less intimate, and --"2012 March 2, Dan Shive, El Goonish Shive (webcomic), Comic for Friday, Mar 2, 2012
    1. (derogatory, slang, usually negative connotation) A child who is regarded as mischievous, unruly, spoiled, or selfish.
      • a spoiled brat
      • Get that little brat away from me!
    2. (neologism, slang, uncountable, usually negative connotation) The qualities possessed by a confident and assertive woman.
      • Here are the people and the styles at the DNC that embodied the brat ethos.2024 August 23, Lauren Bulbin, Annaliese Nurnberg, “The best brat styles of DNC”, in The Washington Post, Washington, D.C.: The Washington Post Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 23...
      • Brat is being lazy until 10 P.M., at which point you construct a château using discarded scraps of pleather, finish it by morning, and immediately win the Pritzker Architecture Prize.2024 August 26, Lena Dunham, “A Guide to Brat Summer”, in The New Yorker, New York, N.Y.: Condé Nast Publications, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 27 Aug 2024
    3. (slang, usually negative connotation) A child (at any age) of an active member of the military or the diplomatic service.
      • an army brat
      • Lt. Gen. John L. DeWitt, Commander of the Fourth Army, was an army “brat,” which means his father was an army officer. But he went into the army from Princeton, not from West Point.1941 June 5, Gerry Dick, “They Practiced Art of War, Then They Studied It”, in Hope Star, Hope, Arkansas, page 5
    4. (slang, usually negative connotation) A submissive partner who is disobedient and unruly.
  2. (broadly, derogatory) An immature, spoiled and/or selfish person.
  3. A turbot or flatfish.
    • For the crabby awd dealers in ling, cod, and brats / And the vurgins that tempt us wi' nice maiden skyet...1843, Thomas Wilson, The Movement^([The Pitman's Pay: And Other Poems])
  4. (historical) A rough cloak or ragged garment.
    • The chief's daughter wears a brat and léine girdled with a criss.1961, Audrey I. Barfoot, Everyday costume in Britain: from the earliest times to 1900, page 80
    • The prevailing style of dress in the early medieval period comprised a léine (tunic) worn under a brat (cloak).2005, Seán Duffy, Medieval Ireland: An Encyclopedia, →ISBN, page 156
  5. (Scotland, UK, dialectal, obsolete) A coarse kind of apron for keeping the clothes clean; a bib.
    • [She] had still on the rough worsted apron of nappy homespun wool, called a "brat".1882, John Strathesk, “pp. 135”, in Blinkbonny^([The English Dialect Dictionary... brat])
  6. (obsolete) The young of an animal.
    • Their ſhoulders broad, for complet armour fit,
      Their lims more large and of a bigger ſize
      Than all the brats yſprong from Typhons loins:c. 1587–1588 (date written), [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC...
    • They are your Will-Worship-men, your Prelates Brats: Take the whole Litter of’um, and you’ll finde never a barrel better Herring.1680, Roger L'Estrange, Citt and Bumpkin

Verb

brat (third-person singular simple present brats, present participle bratting, simple past and past participle bratted)

  1. (intransitive) To act in a bratty manner as the submissive.
    • Ruthie was Ed's own submissive, a short, pretty, feisty ash-blonde New York City native who combined her submission to Ed with a good deal of mischievous bratting and a lot of sharp, intelligent conversation […]2021, Ardie Stallard, Switch: A Tale of Spanking, BDSM & Romance
    • Rather, Ana moves between playful bratting and a type of “conquer me” wantedness that good Dominants would respond to with increased control and correction.2020, Jessica M. Kratzer, Communication in Kink, page 43

Adjective

brat (comparative more brat, superlative most brat)

  1. (neologism, briefly popular in 2024, otherwise rare) Characteristic of a confident and assertive woman.
    • kamala IS brat2024 July 21, @charli_xcx [Charli XCX], Twitter, archived from the original on 24 Jul 2024
    • Starmer's Tory predecessors Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss were identified as brat by 15 percent each of those asked.2024 August 13, Noah Keate, “It's official: Boris Johnson is brat”, in Politico, archived from the original on 15 Aug 2024

Noun (2)

brat (countable and uncountable, plural brats)

  1. (informal) Bratwurst.
    • There are many people loitering, eating ice cream, talking, eating brats.2020, Brandon Taylor, Real Life, Daunt Books Originals, page 267
    • What’s the can’t-miss food? / Brat or sausage. […] — Tom G.2024 September 1, Matt Schneidman, The Athletic Staff, “Lambeau Field guide: What to know about the Green Bay Packers’ home stadium”, in The Athletic, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company...

Noun (3)

brat (plural brats)

  1. A thin bed of coal mixed with pyrites or carbonate of lime.

Noun (4) capitalized: BRAT

BRAT (uncountable)

  1. (abbreviation, acronym) Acronym of bananas, rice, apple sauce, toast, the basis of a diet formerly recommended for an upset stomach.
    • For diarrhea caused by a stomach virus or a meal that didn’t agree with you, try the BRAT diet, says James Lee, MD, gastroenterologist with St. Joseph Hospital in Orange, Calif.2015 March 31, Linda Melone, “The worst foods to eat when you’re sick, and the best ones”, in CNN
  2. (US, abbreviation, acronym) Acronym of Bradley reactive armor tile.

brat meaning in Hindi, Marathi, Urdu and Telugu

brat in Hindi

ब्राट, ब्रैट

brat in Marathi

ब्रॅट, ब्राट

brat in Urdu

براٹ

brat in Telugu

a selfish, spoiled, or unruly child
గుంట guṇṭa
More languagesFewer languages
brat in Kannada
ಬ್ರ್ಯಾಟ್, ಬ್ರಾಟ್
brat in Gujarati
બ્રાટ
brat in Odia
ବ୍ରାଟ୍, ବ୍ରାଟ
brat in Nepali
ब्र्याट, ब्राट
brat in Thai
เด็กเปรต dèk-bprèet, เด็กเวร dèk-ween, เด็กแสบ dèk-sɛ̀ɛp

Examples of brat in a sentence

  • My favorite touch is how each of her Nike shoes has its own little bow, which is just the perfect amount of brat.2024 August 27, Brooke LaMantia, “Naomi Osaka Is Having a Brat U.S. Open”, in The Cut, archived from the original on 28 Aug 2024:
  • Women wore loose, flowing, ankle-length robes modelled on 11th-century European fashion (derived from what O'Neill called the léine) and, perhaps, a brat over these.2006, Celtic Culture: A-Celti, →ISBN, page 1272:
  • '[…] is brat’ was applied to a host of different entities.[2026, L. Bendfeldt, Peace is brat: NATO, digital militarism, and the absurd:
  • Habeck later reposted fan‐made videos using slogans like “Green is brat,” demonstrating bottom‐up to top‐down incorporation.[2026, M Bösch, “TikTok Edits, Vibes, Audio Memes: Participatory Propaganda in the 2025 German Federal Election Campaign”, in Media and...

All 40 example sentences with brat

Synonyms of brat

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of brat

Forms of brat

Noun
pluralbrats
Verb
third-person singular presentbrats
present participlebratting
past participlebratted
pastbratted
Adjective
comparativemore brat
superlativemost brat

Plural of brat: brats

Origin of brat

Early Modern English (c. 1500) slang term meaning "beggar's child". Possibly from Scots bratchet (“bitch, hound”), in which case it would be a doublet of brachet. Another possibility is that it was originally a dialectal word, from northern and western England and the Midlands, for a "makeshift or ragged garment," from Old English bratt (“cloak”), which is from a Celtic source (Old Irish brat (“cloak, cloth”)). In the sense "characteristic of a confident and assertive woman", coined by English singer and songwriter Charli XCX in her 2024 album Brat, though occasional earlier uses of the word with a "reclaimed" or ironic, positive connotation existed, including in LGBTQ slang for people of certain femme or feminine-leaning personalities.

Clipping of bratwurst, from German Bratwurst.

Words formed from brat

Phrases with brat

Words that rhyme with brat

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about brat

What does brat mean?
Brat means a human child.
What is brat in Hindi?
Brat in Hindi is ब्राट, ब्रैट. See Brat meaning in Hindi.
How do you use brat in a sentence?
My favorite touch is how each of her Nike shoes has its own little bow, which is just the perfect amount of brat.
What part of speech is brat?
Brat can be a noun, a verb or an adjective.
How do you pronounce brat?
Brat is pronounced /bɹæt/.
What is the plural of brat?
The plural of brat is brats.

Words near brat in the dictionary

  1. brasting
  2. brasts
  3. Braswell
  4. Braswells
  5. Brasília
  6. brat
  7. brat green
  8. Brat Pack
  9. brat tamer
  10. brat tamers
  11. Bratanek

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: brat (page history and authors); BRAT (page history and authors); brat (Hindi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); brat (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); brat (Urdu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); brat (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); brat (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); brat (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); brat (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-brat.ogg, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-brat.wav.

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