bran

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English bran, also bren and brin,^[2][3] borrowed from Old French bren, also bran,^{[3][4][5][6][7]} recorded in Anglo-Norman from the early 13th century for bran and for scurf or scales on the skin.^[8] The OED compares related Romance forms, among them Italian brenno in dialect.^[3] Its further origin is disputed.^[3][4][9] Barnhart traces it to a Gaulish word, probably surviving in Vulgar Latin *brennus, and compares Breton brenn,^[5] and the American Heritage Dictionary, Klein, the MED, Collins and Partridge call it Celtic.^{[10][7][2][11][12]} Wiktionary derives it from Gaulish brennos (“rotten”), from Proto-Celtic *bragnos (“rotten, foul”).^[1] Etymonline connects it, perhaps, with Gaulish *brenno- (“manure”) or with burn,^[4] and Ayto thinks it may ultimately be connected with burn.^[9] The OED, however, says that the Celtic words usually quoted, Breton brenn, Welsh bran and Scottish Gaelic bran, appear to be borrowed from French and English; only if the modern French sense "filth, excrement", which is not recorded in Old French, were the original one could one compare braen and Irish brean, used of manure.^[3][9] The Shorter Oxford, Hoad and the Oxford Dictionary of English call it of unknown origin.^[13][6][14]

Earliest recorded meaning

The husk of grain separated from the flour after grinding: first recorded about 1325, in a gloss on Walter de Bibbesworth's treatise.^[3] Barnhart finds it before 1325 in the Cursor Mundi,^[5] and Etymonline dates it to about 1300.^[4]

Semantic evolution

The core meaning, the husks of cereal grain sifted from the flour, has not changed.^[3][15] The MED records it in 1340 in the Ayenbite of Inwyt, separating the flour from the bran,^[2] and Chaucer used it, in the form bren.^[16] In the 16th century it also meant scurf or dandruff in the hair, a sense that died out by the late 16th century;^[3][13][4] the Anglo-Norman word already had the sense of scales on the skin.^[8] From 1574 it appeared in proverbial phrases such as to sift to the bran and to take the flour and leave the bran,^[3] and Johnson (1755) quoted Shakespeare's Coriolanus: "leave me but the bran".^[17] From 1610 to 1672 bran also meant sort or class, probably suggested by the Latin phrase ejusdem farinae, "of the same meal".^[3][15] In Dickens's Oliver Twist (1838) a fourpenny bran is a loaf.^[18] In Oxfordshire and Suffolk dialect brans were freckles, and bran-faced meant freckled in Warwickshire and Sussex.^[19] The verb, to clean dyed calico by boiling it in bran and water, is recorded from 1828.^[3]

Timeline

• c. 1325 – the husks of grain separated from flour.^[3] Barnhart finds it in the Cursor Mundi before 1325.^[5]
• 1574 – scurf in the hair (obsolete by 1578).^[3]
• 1574 – in figurative and proverbial uses.^[3]
• 1610 – sort, class (obsolete by 1672).^[3]
• 1828 – verb, to treat calico with bran and water.^[3]
• 1838 – a loaf, in Dickens's slang.^[18]

Meanings

Noun

1. The broken outer coat of wheat, rye or other cereal grain, separated from the flour by sifting and used as animal feed and in food: Add a spoonful of bran to the muffin mix.^[15][11][3]
2. (obsolete, 1610–1672) Sort, class.^[15][3]
3. (obsolete) Scurf or dandruff in the hair.^[3][13]

Verb

1. To boil in bran and water, as in clearing dyed calico, or to clean with bran.^[15][3]

Word family

• branny

Related words

• burn

Usage notes

The OED records two other rare and obsolete nouns spelled bran: the name of an imperfectly known wild ox, borrowed from French in 1688,^[3] and a kind of fish, recorded in 1720.^[3]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
6. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
8. ^ a b Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
9. ^ a b c Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
10. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
11. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
12. ^ Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
13. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
14. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
15. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
16. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
17. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
18. ^ a b Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
19. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)