brood

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English brood, earlier brod,^[2][3][4] inherited from Old English brōd (“brood, offspring; breeding, hatching”),^{[5][6][7][8][2]} from Proto-Germanic *brōduz (“heat, breeding”).^[6][2] It is cognate with Middle Dutch broet, Dutch broed, Old High German bruot (“heat, warmth, hatching, brood”) and German Brut (“brood”).^[5][6][2][9] The Germanic noun was formed with a -d suffix from a base Proto-Germanic *brō- (“to warm, heat”),^[2][6][10] so that it meant literally that which is hatched by warmth;^[6][4] the same base gives Middle Low German brōien and German brühen (“to scald”).^[4][11] Etymonline and Barnhart trace it to Proto-Indo-European *bhre- (“burn, heat, incubate”),^[6][2] which Etymonline derives from the root *bhreu- (“to boil, bubble, burn”).^[6][8] It is closely related to breed,^[12][13][14] and Ayto names braise, breath and probably brawn as other English descendants of the Indo-European root.^[12] The verb is formed in Middle English from the noun.^[5][6][2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The young of egg-laying animals, a family of young from one hatching: about 1000, in Ælfric's homilies, where bees breed their brood from honey.^[5][7][2] In Middle English it is found in The Owl and the Nightingale (before 1250).^[2][3]

Semantic evolution

Ayto stresses that the underlying idea of the word is not so much reproduction as incubation, the warmth that makes eggs hatch.^[12] From the late 13th century it was also used of human children or a family, now usually with a touch of contempt,^[5][6] and in Middle English of the young of fish and of cattle, senses later lost.^[5][3] From the 1580s it meant a race or kind of people or things, again mostly contemptuously, much like crew or swarm.^[5] The verb, to sit on eggs to hatch them, appears in the 1440s,^[5][6][2] and soon came to be used figuratively, of nursing anger or another feeling as a hen keeps her eggs warm: Barnhart and Etymonline date this to the 1570s.^[2][6][13] The modern intransitive sense of thinking moodily about something dates from the 18th century: the OED's first record is in Johnson's Rambler (1751),^[5][12] and the bare sense to brood, to dwell gloomily on one's thoughts, from Tennyson (1832).^[5] From 1697, in Dryden, it was also said of darkness, silence or the like hanging over a place like a brooding bird.^[5] As an attributive word meaning “for breeding” it is recorded from 1526, as in brood hen and brood sow;^[5] Etymonline dates brood mare to 1829.^[6] In Devon a brood was a litter of pigs, and in Scotland the youngest child of a family.^[15]

Timeline

• c. 1000 – the young of egg-laying animals, in Ælfric.^[5][2]
• c. 1275 – the action of brooding eggs; offspring, in The Owl and the Nightingale.^[5][3]
• before 1300 – human children, a family.^[5] Etymonline dates this sense to about 1300.^[6]
• 1389 – the young of fish (obsolete by 1558).^[5]
• c. 1440 – verb, to sit on eggs, in the Promptorium Parvulorum.^[5][2]
• 1526 – attributive, “for breeding”, as in brood mare.^[5]
• 1571 – verb, to cover young with the wings; the figurative brooding over a feeling, in Barnhart's dating.^[5][2]
• 1581 – a race or kind of people or things.^[5]
• 1697 – to hang or hover over, of night or silence, in Dryden.^[5]
• 1751 – to meditate moodily on something, in Johnson's Rambler.^[5]
• 1754 – the larvae of bees and wasps.^[5]
• 1832 – to meditate moodily, without an object, in Tennyson.^[5]

Meanings

Noun

1. The young of a bird or other animal hatched or born at one time: a hen with her brood of chicks.^[16][17][5]
2. The children of one family, often used jokingly: She arrived with her whole brood.^[16][5]
3. A group or kind of people or things, often used contemptuously.^[16][5]
4. The eggs and larvae of bees or wasps.^[17][5]

Verb

1. To think long and moodily about something: He brooded over the lost match all evening.^[16][17][5]
2. Of a bird, to sit on eggs to hatch them, or to cover the young with the wings.^[16][17][5]
3. To hang or hover over something, as clouds or darkness do.^[16][5]
4. (obsolete, 1618–25) To cherish or nurse tenderly.^[5][17]

Adjective

1. Kept for breeding: a brood mare.^[16][17][5]

Word family

• broodingly
• broodless
• foulbrood
• brooder
• broody
• brood parasite
• brood parasitism

Related words

• breed
• brew
• braise
• breath
• brawn

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
3. ^ a b c d 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)
4. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ a b Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
8. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
9. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
11. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
12. ^ a b c d Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
13. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
14. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
15. ^ 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)
16. ^ a b c d e f g Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
17. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster