Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use brood in a sentence

33 example sentences · noun, adjective, verb

Brood means the young of certain animals, especially a group of young birds or fowl hatched at one time by the same mother. Example: “In some species of birds, both the mother and father brood the eggs.”

Examples of brood by meaning

nounThe children in one family; offspring.

  • Garland Green, the tenth in a brood of eleven, was born on June 24, 1942, in Dunleath, Mississippi.1990, Wayne Jancik, The Billboard Book of One-Hit Wonders, →ISBN, page 243

adjectiveKept or reared for breeding.

  • a brood mare

verbTo keep an egg warm to make it hatch.

  • In some species of birds, both the mother and father brood the eggs.

verbTo protect (something that is gradually maturing); to foster.

  • Under the rock was a midshipman fish, brooding a mass of eggs.

verb(typically with over, on or about) To dwell upon one's thoughts moodily and at length, mainly alone.

  • He sat brooding over the upcoming battle, fearing the outcome.
  • Fitzwilliam was of a genial, even playful, disposition, but he had come home brooding and depressed.1923, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], “(please specify the page)”, in The Eyes of Max Carrados, London: Grant Richards...
  • And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock.1925, F[rancis] Scott Fitzgerald, chapter 9, in The Great Gatsby, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, published 1953, →ISBN, page 182

More sentences with brood

  • Her loyal subjects need her, and so she doughtily broods on.2007 May 15, Natalie Angier, “In Hive or Castle, Duty Without Power”, in New York Times. From the entry doughtily
  • Woodlice commonly produce offspring 1–3 times per year, with spring and autumn broods most common.2001, John L. Capinera, editor, Handbook of Vegetable Pests, page 566. From the entry woodlouse
  • A male-biased brood free of endosymbiotes was found in the SO population.1994, International Journal on Endocytobiosis and Cell Research, page 222. From the entry arrhenogeny
  • The great hotel, with its look of sedate luxury, brooded massively there with people teeming about it.1985, Doris Lessing, The Good Terrorist, London: Jonathan Cape […], →ISBN, page 352. From the entry sedate
  • Above us the avern brooded like a gonfalon; from it there drifted a myrrhic perfume.1980, Gene Wolfe, chapter XXIV, in The Shadow of the Torturer (The Book of the New Sun; 1), New York: Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, page 217. From the entry myrrhic
  • Over all, there brooded the shadow of his injuries and the tantalus of their slow healing.1953, Ian Fleming, Casino Royale, Penguin Classics, published 2004, page 149. From the entry tantalus
  • Aloft in the flowerhole brooded the remains of a factitious murrey chrysanthemum.1953, Samuel Beckett, Watt, [Paris]: Olympia Press, →OCLC. From the entry murrey
  • A woman fed a brood of lettuce hens taiyakis.2017, Grace H. Park, Victoria H. Park, Eric H. Parkerson, “Welcome to Afoodica”, in The Adventures of Hansel & Gretel: Afoodica (HEA vs…. From the entry taiyaki
  • The groups of magicicadas, known as broods, surface only once every 13 or 17 years depending on the species.2013 May 3, Megan Buerger, “Bugged by Cicada Swarm? Don't Be”, in Wall Street Journal. From the entry periodical cicada
  • At times nearly all brood diseases (American foulbrood, European foulbrood, parafoulbrood, sacbrood) were thought to represent a single malady.2012, Edward Steinhaus, Insect Pathology V2: An Advanced Treatise, page 553. From the entry foulbrood
  • Ancient mysteries brood silently in the Land of the Pharaohs.1997, James Finn Garner, Apocalypse Wow!: A Memoir for the End of Time, page 102. From the entry noselessly
  • I never saw him, but Jackie Langley told me Kerouac was a strange bird, stayed drunk, talked crazy, brooded.1992, Kaye Gibbons, “My Mother, Literature, and a Life Split Neatly into Two Halves”, in Janet Sternburg, editor, The Writer on Her Work…. From the entry strange bird
  • Both brood and adult bees are susceptible to attack by several species of fungi belonging to the genus Aspergillus.1978, Roger A. Morse, Honey Bee Pests, Predators, and Diseases, page 93. From the entry stonebrood
  • A supernatural terror brooded over the trackless heaths, the dark mere pools were inhabited by the water elves.1922, Eleanour Sinclair Rohde, The Old English Herbals, London: Longmans, Green and Co., page 3. From the entry mere pool
  • Three duckesses had fluffy, little broods parading along behind, ready to claim their waterfront real estate as soon as the ice stopped being ice.2012, Robert L. Payne, A Side Order of Truth, Xlibris, →ISBN, →LCCN, page 481. From the entry duckess
  • To my brood: cousin Michele, sister-in-law Samantha, brother Michael, bonus mother Elaine, and to my brother David who puts the hysterical in Halpern.2007, Adena Halpern, Target Underwear and a Vera Wang Gown: Notes from a Single Girl's Closet, Penguin, →ISBN. From the entry bonus mother
  • Cantilevers dripping with flowering creeper, egg-domes mellowed with ochre lichens, glasseries shadowed by time and weather to brood the conspiracy of old conservatories.1961, William Sansom, Blue Skies, Brown Studies, page 206. From the entry glassery
  • Parafoulbrood is extremely infectious, apparently being readily transmitted by robbing, drifting, and by the exchange of brood or honey from infected colonies.1933, Experiment Station Record, volume 69, page 560. From the entry parafoulbrood
  • They hang suspended over precipices, these rocky eeries of grim birds of prey that bequeath their appetite for murder and loot to their brood.1910, Hans Adolf Erwein Max graf von Königsmarck, P. H. Oakley Williams, A German Staff Officer in India. From the entry eerie
  • The recollection loosened a throng of benumbed sensations—longings, regrets, imaginings, the throbbing brood of the only spring her heart had ever known.1905, Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth, Book 2, Chapter 11. From the entry loosen
  • I can hunt another grass tuft, lay another set, and rear my brood in peace while he goes "hiking" after eggs at Flathead.1904, P.M. Silloway, “Extracts from Some Montana Note-books, 1904”, in Bulletin of the Cooper Ornithological Club, volumes 1-6, Cooper…. From the entry hike
  • Other species have evolved elaborate defenses to deter “brood parasites,” birds that try to fob off the tedious work of parenting by slipping their eggs into other birds’ nests.2020 August 4, Richard Conniff, “They may look goofy, but ostriches are nobody’s fool”, in National Geographic Magazine. From the entry fob off
  • This ogress too was begotten of the blood of Cain, whose brood had been doomed forever to the icy floods and freezing waters of the earth.1961, Norma Lorre Goodrich, “Beowulf”, in The Medieval Myths, New York: The New American Library, page 33. From the entry beget
  • From these and like studies there emerges a picture of the human mind as a kind of dark Dostoevskeian cavern in whose labyrinthine gloom strange and irrational visions brood.1950, Lionel Ruby, Logic, an Introduction, J. B. Lippincott Company, page x. From the entry Dostoevskeian
  • Very probably they had already made first nests further north, which had their contents destroyed, and they fled south and were more successful with second broods.1904, John Alexander Harvie-Brown, H. A. Macpherson, Fauna of the North-West Highlands and Skye, page 292. From the entry souther
  • Mrs Willy Nilly full of tea to her double-chinned brim broods and bubbles over her coven of kettles on the hissing hot range always ready to steam open the mail.1954, Dylan Thomas, Under Milk Wood […] , New York: New Directions, page 35. From the entry hissing hot

Meaning of brood

  1. noun The young of certain animals, especially a group of young birds or fowl hatched at one time by the same mother.
  2. noun The young of any egg-laying creature, especially if produced at the same time.
  3. noun The eggs and larvae of social insects such as bees, ants and some wasps, especially when gathered together in special brood chambers or combs within the colony.

Full definition of brood

Questions about brood in a sentence

How do you use brood in a sentence?
Brood is used as a noun, adjective and verb. For example: “In some species of birds, both the mother and father brood the eggs.”
What is a short sentence with brood?
“a brood mare”
What does brood mean?
Brood means the young of certain animals, especially a group of young birds or fowl hatched at one time by the same mother.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: brood (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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