Word.ws English Dictionary

brit

/bɹɪt/

brit verb: to break in pieces; divide.

Verb

brit (third-person singular simple present brits, present participle britting, simple past and past participle britted)

  1. (transitive) To break in pieces; divide.
  2. (transitive) To bruise; indent.
  3. (intransitive) To fall out or shatter (as overripe hops or grain).
  4. (dialectal, intransitive) To fade away; alter.

Noun (1)

brit (plural brit)

  1. One of the young of herrings, sprats, etc.
  2. One of the tiny crustaceans, of the genus Calanus, that are part of the diet of right whales.
    • The edges of these bones are fringed with hairy fibres, through which the Right Whale strains the water, and in whose intricacies he retains the small fish, when openmouthed he goes through the seas of brit in feeding time.1851 November 14, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC

Noun (2)

brit (plural brits)

  1. brit milah
  2. A covenant, specifically that between God and the Jewish people.
    • The second theocentric approach to observance stresses the partnership of God and man. The Torah and the mitzvot express the eternal brit or covenant made between God and the Jewish people.2000, David Golinkin, “The Whys and Hows of Conservative Halakhah”, in Responsa in a Moment, volume 3, page 14
    • There is a special brit between God and the Families-of-Israel. The Torah is the story of that brit2005, Joel Lurie Grishaver, Jewish Values Alef to Tav, page 13

Noun (3) capitalized: Brit

Brit (plural Brits)

  1. (informal, formerly offensive) A British person.
  2. A Brit Award, a prize for musicians in Britain.

Adjective capitalized: Brit

Brit (comparative more Brit, superlative most Brit)

  1. (abbreviation) Abbreviation of British.

Proper noun capitalized: Brit

Brit

  1. (abbreviation) Abbreviation of Britain.
    • If Brit joins Common Market . . .; terms for Brit's entry agreed upon, U S will face new econ, political, defense problems when Brit joins EEC; […]1971, U.S. News & World Report, page 30
    • Worked extensively in Brit and USA on behaviour of biol fluids, particularly blood, also lectured in Brit, Germany, Sweden, Japan, Can, USA, 1960s; […]1999, Who's Who in Asia and the Pacific Nations, 4th edition, Routledge, page 445
  2. (abbreviation) Abbreviation of British English.
  3. A short river in Dorset, England, which flows through Bridport to the sea at West Bay; in full, the River Brit.

Forms of brit

Verb
third-person singular presentbrits
present participlebritting
past participlebritted
pastbritted
alternative formbritt
alternative formbrite
Noun
pluralbrit
pluralbrits
alternative formbris
pluralBrits
Adjective
comparativemore Brit
superlativemost Brit

Plural of brit: brit

Origin of brit

From Middle English brytten, brutten, from Old English brittian, bryttian (“to divide, dispense, distribute, rule over, possess, enjoy the use of”), from Proto-Germanic *brutjaną (“to break, divide”), from Proto-Germanic *breutaną (“to destroy, crush, break”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰrewd- (“to break”). Cognate with Icelandic brytja (“to chop up, break in pieces, slaughter”), Swedish bryta (“to break, fracture, cut off”), Danish bryde (“to break”), and outside the Germanic family with Albanian brydh (“to make crumbly, friable, soft”). Related to Old English brytta (“dispenser, giver, author, governor, prince”), Old English brēotan (“to break in pieces, hew down, demolish, destroy, kill”).

Probably from Middle English bret or birt, applied to a different kind of fish. See bret.

Borrowed from Hebrew בְּרִית.

Words formed from brit

Phrases with brit

Words that rhyme with brit

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about brit

What does brit mean?
Brit means to break in pieces; divide.
What part of speech is brit?
Brit can be a verb, a noun, an adjective or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce brit?
Brit is pronounced /bɹɪt/.
What is the past tense of brit?
The past tense of brit is britted.

Words near brit in the dictionary

  1. Brisvegan
  2. Brisvegans
  3. Brisvegas
  4. brisé
  5. brisés
  6. brit
  7. brit ben
  8. Brit Brit
  9. brit chayim
  10. Brit Lit
  11. brit milah

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: brit (page history and authors); Brit (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-Brit.wav.

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