brian

Reading level: hard

Estimated CEFR level: C2 — Proficiency

Estimated from word frequency; not an official CEFR classification.

Etymology

From dialectal English, probably variant of brine (“to burn”), from brine (“a burning”), from Middle English brüne (“a burn, a burning”), from Old English bryne (“a burning, conflagration, fire, flame, heat, inflammation, burn, scald, torch, fervor, passion”), from Proto-Germanic *bruniz (“fire, burning”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰrenu- (“burn, fire”). Cognate with Scots brin (“a flash”), Scots brin, bryne (“to be on fire, be inflamed, burn”), Old Norse bruni (“fire, burning”). More at burn.

A single word — an entire dictionary opens.

Type a word, a sentence, a book title, or a link to an English article. WordNet and the Classics answer.

Try

A library of classics · a vault of words · instant etymology & meaning

Continue reading