Word.ws English Dictionary

bren

/bɹɛn/

bren verb: to burn (to set ablaze).

Verb

bren (third-person singular simple present brens, present participle brenning, simple past brenned, past participle brenned or brent)

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To burn (to set ablaze).
    • And the greene grasse that groweth they shall bren,
      That even the wilde beast shall dy in starved den1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto III”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC

Proper noun (1) capitalized: Bren

Bren (plural Brens)

  1. A surname from Czech.

Proper noun (2) capitalized: Bren

Bren

  1. A female given name, clipping of Brenda.
  2. A male given name, clipping of Brendan.

Noun capitalized: Bren

Bren (plural Brens)

  1. (abbreviation, ellipsis) Ellipsis of Bren gun.

Forms of bren

Verb
third-person singular presentbrens
present participlebrenning
pastbrenned
past participlebrenned
past participlebrent
Proper noun
pluralBrens
Noun
pluralBrens

Origin of bren

From Middle English brennen, from Old Norse brenna, brinna, from Proto-Germanic *brinnaną (“to set on fire”). Cognate with German brennen, Swedish bränna. Doublet of burn; see there for more.

Borrowed from Czech Břeň.

See Bren gun.

Phrases with bren

Words that rhyme with bren

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about bren

What does bren mean?
Bren means to burn (to set ablaze).
What part of speech is bren?
Bren can be a verb, a proper noun or a noun.
How do you pronounce bren?
Bren is pronounced /bɹɛn/.
What is the past tense of bren?
The past tense of bren is brenned.

Words near bren in the dictionary

  1. Bremoaner
  2. Bremoaners
  3. Brems
  4. bremsstrahlung
  5. bremsstrahlungs
  6. bren
  7. Bren gun
  8. Bren guns
  9. Brenaissance
  10. Brenan
  11. Brenanah

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bren (page history and authors); Bren (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-bren.wav.

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