bred
/bɹɛd/
More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations
Australia/bɹed/
bred is the simple past and past participle of breed.
bred is the alternative form of braid.
Meaning of breed
Verb
breed (third-person singular simple present breeds, present participle breeding, simple past and past participle bred)
- To produce offspring sexually; to bear young.
- Plant breeding is always a numbers game.[…]The wild species we use are rich in genetic variation, and individual plants are highly heterozygous and do not breed true. In addition, we are looking for rare alleles, so the more plants we try, the better.2013 May-June, David Van Tassel, Lee DeHaan, “Wild Plants to the Rescue”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 3
- To give birth to; to be the native place of.
- A pond breeds fish.
- To mate.
- To keep (animals) and have (them) reproduce in a way that improves the next generation's qualities.
- To arrange the mating of (specific animals).
- She wanted to breed her cow to the neighbor's registered bull.
- To propagate or grow (plants) in an effort to give (them) certain qualities.
- He tries to breed blue roses.
Meaning of braid
Noun
braid (countable and uncountable, plural braids)
- A sudden movement; a jerk, a wrench.
- And than in a brayde Sir Launcelot brake hys chaynes of hys legges and of hys armys (and in the brakynge he hurte hys hondys sore)[…].1470–1485 (date produced), Thomas Malory, “Capitulum ii”, in [Le Morte Darthur], book XII, [London: […] by William Caxton], published 31 July 1485, →OCLC; republished as H[einrich] Oskar Sommer...
- A weave of three or more strands of fibers, ribbons, cords or hair often for decoration.
- The physician should evaluate for a history of tight ponytails, buns, chignons, braids, twists, weaves, cornrows, dreadlocks, sisterlocks, and hair wefts in addition to the usage of religious hair coverings.2021, Becky S. Li, Howard I. Maibach, Ethnic Skin and Hair and Other Cultural Considerations, page 154
- A stranded wire composed of a number of smaller wires twisted together.
- A tubular sheath made of braided strands of metal placed around a central cable for shielding against electromagnetic interference.
- A caprice or outburst of passion or anger.
- Let the maide learne none uncleanly words, or wanton, or uncomely gesture and moving of the body, no not so much as when she is yet ignorant what shee doth, and innocent; for shee shall doe the same, when shee is growne bigger and of more discretion, […] And oftentimes such braides come uppon them...1540, Juan Luis Vives, chapter 2, in Richard Hyrde, transl., Instruction of a Christian Woman
- Given two sets of n points on corresponding positions on two parallel lines, a braid is a unique set of crossings (over or under) between n strands that connect each point on one line to a point on the other line such that all points represent the terminus of one and only one strand and the traversal of any strand from a starting point to an ending point never moves further away from the from the ending point.
- We introduce braids via their historical roots and uses, make connections with knot theory and present the mathematical theory of braids through the braid group.2009, Mitchell A. Berger, Louis H. Kauffman, Renzo L. Ricca, Lectures on Topological Fluid Mechanics, page 1
Forms of bred
| plural | breds |
|---|
Origin of bred
See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.
From Middle English bred, from Old English bred (“board, plank, tablet, table”). More at braid.
Words formed from bred
Phrases with bred
Words that rhyme with bred
48 more rhymesFewer rhymes
- dread
- wed
- ahead
- bread
- sled
- embed
- in one's stead
- inbred
- ped
- zed
- bestead
- cred
- ed
- fed
- med
- undead
- abed
- bedspread
- DMZ
- Fred
- led
- Prussian red
- retread
- spoon-fed
- unwed
- z
- antired
- aspread
- bark bed
- behead
- bested
- bled
- block head
- cabin bed
- common thread
- Cow Head
- Crow Head
- faned
- fled
- freedom bread
- fugged
- instead
- ked
- knead
- misled
- ned
- pled
- read
Questions about bred
- What is bred the simple past and past participle of?
- Bred is the simple past and past participle of breed.
- How do you pronounce bred?
- Bred is pronounced /bɹɛd/ (UK).
Words near bred in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: bred (page history and authors); breed (page history and authors); braid (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-bred.wav, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Wodencafe-bred.wav.
Cite this entry: “bred.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bred. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.