Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A widespread, often weedy fern (Pteridium aquilinum) having large, triangular, pinnately compound fronds and often forming dense thickets.
- n. An area overgrown with this fern.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A fern, especially the Pteris aquilina and other large ferns. See brake.
Wiktionary
- n. Any of several coarse ferns, of genus Pteridium, that forms dense thickets; often poisonous to livestock
- n. An area of countryside heavily infested with this fern
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A brake or fern.
WordNet 3.0
- n. large coarse fern often several feet high; essentially weed ferns; cosmopolitan.
- n. fern of southeastern Asia; not hardy in cold temperate regions
Etymologies
- From Middle English braken, probably of Scandinavian origin. Cognates include Danish bregne and Swedish bräken ("fern"). (Wiktionary)
- Middle English braken, probably of Scandinavian origin; see bhreg- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“My childhood passed on foot and outdoors, in bracken and on pebbly beaches.”
William Nicholson discusses Seeker, the first volume in a three part trilogy for teens
“You crouch with the wild-birds in bracken and ling,”
“It was snowing so fast that she feared that the way to the peat stack would be blocked up, and therefore her next work was, with the help of the two boys, to pull down as much fuel as would last for a week, and carry it indoors; and she examined the potatoes laid up in bracken leaves, but fancying that if she brought them in, the warmth of the cottage would spoil them, she only took enough for a single meal.”
“A well-known writer, who lives where ferns abound, says that the bracken is the fern of ferns in the British Islands.”
“The undergrowth was gorgeous: bramble, elder, honeysuckle, briony, rowan, and alder vied with one another in the vividness of their crimson and orange, while the bracken was a sea of pale gold.”
“Not one of them knew which portion of the bracken was to be his own.”
“In some areas, the land has become degraded to the point where crops cannot be planted, and it becomes secondary grassland or is simply invaded by weeds, such as bracken (Pteridium).”
“Ferns from the wild such as bracken can be used or house plant species such as the bird's nest fern are also suitable.www. lifeunearthed.co.uk”
WN.com - Articles related to Kill weeds with help from the sun
“In high summer, grappling fronds of bracken grow to chest-height, encroaching on rich grassland like an invading army.”
The Guardian: Back to the land: from London to sheep farming on Eigg
“She was, in a sense, what she seemed: a dead log embedded in dead bracken.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘bracken’.
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the first list
an immense, grandiloquent list that loads like a thousand years sentence in stone. new words are in the other lists.
ridiculous, brummagem, predicament, sanctimonious, vapid, eschew, admonish, auspicious, capitulation, enumerate, lachrymose, tenet and 1648 more...
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Pale Fire
Words gathered while reading Pale Fire.
larches, torquate, stillicide, vermiculate, preterist, theolatry, iridule, vulgarian, cloutish, lemniscate, torsion, trillium and 176 more...
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Flora
fenugreek, verbena, saxifrage, arbutus, calendula, nasturtium, lobelia, hellebore, rhododendron, philodendron, bellflower, heuchera and 449 more...
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wreckingball's Words
reprehensible, problematize, crepuscular, deleterious, pestilent, strumpet, draggletail, interrobang, meretricious, systematize, schadenfreude, capricious and 443 more...
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colleen's words ii
sibilant, sundry, spindle, distaff, device, mortar, pestle, scythe, flail, thresh, frown, elementary and 495 more...
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azd's Words
adamantine, abatial, ablate, ablative, abrogate, accretive, acromegaly, acrostic, actinism, actinic, acuity, adduce and 968 more...
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misterspee's Words
prolepsis, cumin, nacreous, lucre, obstreperous, nibble, nubbin, kenosis, frangible, aposiopesis, synecdoche, persiflage and 144 more...
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Jane Eyre
abigail, sanguine, chancel, bourne, peremptorily, parley, unwonted, fagging, convolvuli, tarry, insuperable, execrations and 190 more...
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Wordie Working Overtime - some words ...
Some words of from XTC songs that I like or for some reason stand out. That and a dollar will get you a ride on the bus.
transistor, impaled, settee, sunspecs, neon, meccanic, infatuation, greenhouse, capers, consequence, excepted, helicopter and 112 more...
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NakedFringe's Words
masticate, chamber, orchid, mandolin, yellow, pomegranate, conundrum, paradox, gyrate, calamitous, opalescent, cacophony and 533 more...
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sionnach's Words
contumely, fomite, holmgang, poltroon, eleemosynary, obsidian, nugatory, grindcore, felch, recrudescent, pyx, parenteral and 3271 more...
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the road
glaucoma, tarpaulin, flowstone, flue, rimstone, alabaster, gully, shoring, grike, riprap, windfall, transom and 120 more...
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5-0
Hecko, words! I’m so happy I’ve found you. I want to keep you all and never want to lose you again. I hope you like it here.
amscray, thistledown, tine, tinsel, pungent, snarl, wail, lanky, viscid, dawdle, luminous, stow and 2719 more...
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Chromonyms
These chromonyms are defined as colors in at least one dictionary (mostly MW3). (Actually there's one fake, for reasons I'll explain someday.) They are all one-word nouns such as "kelly", which can...
absinthe, acacia, acorn, alabaster, alesan, almond, aloma, amaranth, amber, amethyst, anemone, anil and 821 more...
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Words Covered in Faery Dust (B)
words that evoke magic, mystery, mayhem, magnificence or anything else that glimmers in the grass
balcony, bailey, baguette, bairn, balalaika, baldric, balefire, baby's breath, ballet, balm of gilead, balsam, baluster and 188 more...
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persnickety parlance
behoove, ebullient, insouciant, insipient, froth, quandary, quixotic, tendril, maktub, furrow, furl, anastrophe and 1076 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for bracken.
reesetee In cadence, that reminds me of one of my favorite first lines (which has nothing to do with bracken), from One Hundred Years of Solitude:
"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."
Dec 1, 2007
chained_bear One of my favorite first lines of any book is this--and the last time I read it was 1988, so imagine the impression it left on me then:
"Gavin Cameron, who was eleven years old and would one day become Bishop of Scotland, pulled his dagger from between the man's ribs and wiped it clean on the bracken."
That's all I know about bracken. Wow! (From Reay Tannahill, The World, the Flesh, and the Devil, which I won't ever read again for fear it will suck.) Dec 1, 2007
bilby All together now! We sometimes refer to these plants as bracken fern in Australia. Possibly to distinguish them from other types of fern, eg. tree fern, maidenhair fern, cell fern, etc. Nov 30, 2007
sionnach I think the sea serpents might be kraken. We have bracken in Ireland as well, mainly in the bogs. It was also the name of a TV soap opera. Nov 30, 2007
byra To me, the word bracken conjures up images of sea serpents and Grecian mythology. I've only ever heard of these plants being called ferns. Nov 30, 2007
arby According to Mencken, we call them ferns. (I've never heard bracken used over here.) I associate this word with Scotland and heath for some reason. Nov 30, 2007
yarb Surprised to see this on arby's list of Britlish. What's the American word?
I grew up surrounded by this stuff (Weirdnet makes no sense as usual) and spent summers hacking it down with stick and scythes and autumn weekends inhaling its carcinogenic spores. Nov 30, 2007