braire

Forms

braire (defective)^[1] Anglo-Norman spellings include breire, brere and braer.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old French braire, inherited from Vulgar Latin *bragiō (“to cry out”).^[1][3][4] Bloch and Wartburg, Rey and Meyer-Lübke give the Vulgar Latin verb as *bragere (or with the ending ⟨-ire⟩).^[5][3][6] It may go back to an expressive stem Proto-Celtic *brag-, seen in the Scottish Gaelic verb braigh (“to crackle”) and Old Irish braigim, though Bloch and Wartburg and Rey point out that the meanings are rather far apart.^[5][3] Wiktionary traces it through Gaulish to a Proto-Celtic verb meaning “to break wind”.^[1] Littré cites Diez's alternative, a strengthened form of raire with a ⟨b⟩, and notes the Late Latin bragire (“to neigh”).^[7]

Cognate with Old Occitan braire (“to shout, sing”) and some Italian dialect forms.^[3][5][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

It is first found in the Chanson de Roland (about 1080) in the general sense “to cry out, shout”, of men dying in battle and of the horses of the enemy.^[5][7][8]

Semantic evolution

In Old and Middle French braire was a synonym of crier, and the two verbs were often used as a pair; its subject was a person or, more rarely, a thing.^[3] In Anglo-Norman it also covered the cries of many animals, from roaring beasts to bleating sheep and cackling hens.^[2] Until the 16th century it meant “to shout, to weep”, and the sense “to weep” lives on in the northern Gallo-Romance dialects.^[5][6]

The modern sense, the cry of the âne, is recorded from 1640 (Oudin), as the verb narrowed to that animal; brailler went the opposite way.^[3][8] The noun braiment followed the same course: “cry” from the 12th century, “bray of a donkey” from 1590.^[3] In familiar use the verb was then applied to people again, for crying children or loud singing.^[8][9]

English took the word in about 1300 as bray.^[10]

Timeline

• c. 1080 – Braire “to cry out” appears in the Chanson de Roland.^[5][8]
• 1121–1125 – First Anglo-Norman record.^[2]
• 1160 – The noun braiement “cry” is recorded.^[3]
• c. 1300 – English borrows it as bray.^[10]
• 1590 – Braiement is used of the donkey's cry.^[3]
• 1640 – Oudin records the sense “to bray”, of the donkey.^[8][3]
• 1859 – Berlioz uses it transitively for singing badly, earlier than the TLFi's first example (1922).^[11]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive) Of a donkey, to bray.^[12][13][9]
2. (familiar) To shout or bawl, as of crying children or people shouting loudly.^[8][14]
3. (familiar, transitive) To sing or recite something loudly and stupidly.^[13][8]
4. (familiar) Faire braire: to bore someone stiff.^[12]
5. (regional) In Belgium and northern France, to cry, weep.^[1][5]

Word family

• braiment

Related words

• brailler

Usage notes

The verb is defective, used mainly in the infinitive and the third persons.^[1][8] The phrase braire avec les ânes was used as a variant of hurler avec les loups “to follow the crowd”.^[9]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
4. ^ Wartburg, Walther von, et al. (1922–2002), Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, 25 vols., Bonn / Leipzig / Basel: Klopp / Teubner / Zbinden, p. 1, 490a
5. ^ a b c d e f g Bloch, Oscar; Wartburg, Walther von (1989), Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française, 8th ed., Paris: Presses universitaires de France
6. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
7. ^ a b Littré, Émile (1873–1877), Dictionnaire de la langue française, 4 vols. and supplement, Paris: Hachette
8. ^ a b c d e f g h Guilbert, Louis; Lagane, René; Niobey, Georges, eds. (1971–1978; 1989), Grand Larousse de la langue française, Paris: Larousse
9. ^ a b c Trésor de la langue française informatisé (2004), ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine, atilf.fr/tlfi; electronic version of Imbs, Paul; Quemada, Bernard, eds. (1971–1994), Trésor de la langue française, Paris: CNRS / Gallimard
10. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
11. ^ Quemada, Bernard, ed. (1959–2006), Datations et documents lexicographiques (Base historique du vocabulaire français, BHVF), Paris: Klincksieck / CNRS / Champion; ATILF
12. ^ a b Rey-Debove, Josette; Rey, Alain, eds. (2007), Le Petit Robert de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert
13. ^ a b Dictionnaire de français Larousse, larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais (accessed 2024)
14. ^ Dictionnaire Le Robert en ligne, dictionnaire.lerobert.com (accessed 2024)