brake

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun A high horse-drawn carriage with four wheels.
• noun A lever or handle on a machine such as a pump.
• noun A toothed device for crushing and beating flax or hemp.
• noun A heavy harrow for breaking clods of earth.
• noun An apparatus for kneading large amounts of dough.
• noun A machine for bending and folding sheet metal.
• transitive verb To crush (flax or hemp) in a toothed device.
• transitive verb To break up (clods of earth) with a harrow.
• noun An area overgrown with dense brushwood, briers, and undergrowth; a thicket.
• noun Any of various ferns of the genus Pteris having pinnately compound leaves and including several popular houseplants.
• noun Any of certain other ferns, such as bracken.
• noun A device for slowing or stopping motion, as of a vehicle, especially by contact friction.
• noun Something that slows or stops action.
• intransitive verb To reduce the speed of with or as if with a brake.
• intransitive verb To operate or apply a brake.
• intransitive verb To be slowed or stopped by or as if by the operation of a brake.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun A break; brack; flaw.
• noun A mechanical device for arresting the motion of a vehicle: now usually classed with brake, see braken., 9.
• To vomit.
• To vomit; cast up.
• noun Obsolete or archaic preterit of break.
• To crack or break (the stalks of flax) in order to separate the woody portions from the fiber. Now written break.
• To retard or stop the motion of by the application of a brake.
• noun A place overgrown with bushes or brushwood, shrubs, and brambles; a thicket, in the United States, a cane-brake, that is, a tract of ground overgrown with cane, Arundinaria macrosperma.
• noun A single bush, or a number of bushes growing by themselves.
• noun The name given to Pteris aquilina and other large ferns. See Pteris.
• noun In cracker-baking, a machine for rolling dough, to be used in making gingersnaps and other thin cakes, into sheets ready for the panning-machine.
• noun In sheet-metal work, a machine for bending and forming sheet-metal, used in making larger forms such as metal cornices; a cornice-brake.
• noun A tool or machine for breaking up the woody portion of flax, to loosen it from the harl or fibers.
• noun The handle or lever by which a pump is worked.
• noun A bakers' kneading-machine.
• noun A sharp bit or snaffle: as, “a snaffle bit or brake,”
• noun An apparatus for confining refractory horses while being shod.
• noun A medieval engine of war analogous to the ballista.
• noun A large heavy harrow for breaking clods after plowing. Also called drag.
• noun A kind of wagonette. A large and heavy variety of this vehicle is used for breaking in young horses to harness.
• noun Any mechanical device for arresting or retarding the motion of a vehicle or car by means of friction.
• noun The fore part of a carriage, by which it is turned.
• noun A basket-makers' tool for stripping the bark from willow wands.
• noun An old instrument of torture. Also called the Duke of Exeter's daughter.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• Arhaic imp. of break.
• noun (Bot.) A fern of the genus Pteris, esp. the Pteris aquilina, common in almost all countries. It has solitary stems dividing into three principal branches. Less properly: Any fern.
• noun A thicket; a place overgrown with shrubs and brambles, with undergrowth and ferns, or with canes.
• noun a thicket of canes. See Canebrake.
• noun An instrument or machine to break or bruise the woody part of flax or hemp so that it may be separated from the fiber.
• noun An extended handle by means of which a number of men can unite in working a pump, as in a fire engine.
• noun A baker's kneading though.
• noun A sharp bit or snaffle.
• noun A frame for confining a refractory horse while the smith is shoeing him; also, an inclosure to restrain cattle, horses, etc.