Definitions for brake
breɪkbrake

Princeton's WordNet(0.00 / 0 votes)Rate this definition:

1. brake(noun)

   a restraint used to slow or stop a vehicle

2. brake(noun)

   any of various ferns of the genus Pteris having pinnately compound leaves and including several popular houseplants

3. bracken, pasture brake, brake, Pteridium aquilinum(noun)

   large coarse fern often several feet high; essentially weed ferns; cosmopolitan

4. brake(noun)

   an area thickly overgrown usually with one kind of plant

5. brake(verb)

   anything that slows or hinders a process

   "she wan not ready to put the brakes on her life with a marriage"; "new legislation will put the brakes on spending"

6. brake(verb)

   stop travelling by applying a brake

   "We had to brake suddenly when a chicken crossed the road"

7. brake(verb)

   cause to stop by applying the brakes

   "brake the car before you go into a curve"

Webster Dictionary(0.00 / 0 votes)Rate this definition:

1. Brake

   imp. of Break

2. Brake(noun)

   a fern of the genus Pteris, esp. the P. aquilina, common in almost all countries. It has solitary stems dividing into three principal branches. Less properly: Any fern

3. Brake(noun)

   a thicket; a place overgrown with shrubs and brambles, with undergrowth and ferns, or with canes

4. Brake(verb)

   an instrument or machine to break or bruise the woody part of flax or hemp so that it may be separated from the fiber

5. Brake(verb)

   an extended handle by means of which a number of men can unite in working a pump, as in a fire engine

6. Brake(verb)

   a baker's kneading though

7. Brake(verb)

   a sharp bit or snaffle

8. Brake(verb)

   a frame for confining a refractory horse while the smith is shoeing him; also, an inclosure to restrain cattle, horses, etc

9. Brake(verb)

   that part of a carriage, as of a movable battery, or engine, which enables it to turn

10. Brake(verb)

    an ancient engine of war analogous to the crossbow and ballista

11. Brake(verb)

    a large, heavy harrow for breaking clods after plowing; a drag

12. Brake(verb)

    a piece of mechanism for retarding or stopping motion by friction, as of a carriage or railway car, by the pressure of rubbers against the wheels, or of clogs or ratchets against the track or roadway, or of a pivoted lever against a wheel or drum in a machine

13. Brake(verb)

    an apparatus for testing the power of a steam engine, or other motor, by weighing the amount of friction that the motor will overcome; a friction brake

14. Brake(verb)

    a cart or carriage without a body, used in breaking in horses

15. Brake(verb)

    an ancient instrument of torture

16. Brake

    of Break

Freebase(0.00 / 0 votes)Rate this definition:

1. Brake

   A brake is a mechanical device which inhibits motion. The rest of this article is dedicated to various types of vehicular brakes. Most commonly brakes use friction to convert kinetic energy into heat, though other methods of energy conversion may be employed. For example regenerative braking converts much of the energy to electrical energy, which may be stored for later use. Other methods convert kinetic energy into potential energy in such stored forms as pressurized air or pressurized oil. Eddy current brakes use magnetic fields to convert kinetic energy into electric current in the brake disc, fin, or rail, which is converted into heat. Still other braking methods even transform kinetic energy into different forms, for example by transferring the energy to a rotating flywheel. Brakes are generally applied to rotating axles or wheels, but may also take other forms such as the surface of a moving fluid. Some vehicles use a combination of braking mechanisms, such as drag racing cars with both wheel brakes and a parachute, or airplanes with both wheel brakes and drag flaps raised into the air during landing. Since kinetic energy increases quadratically with velocity, an object moving at 10 m/s has 100 times as much energy as one of the same mass moving at 1 m/s, and consequently the theoretical braking distance, when braking at the traction limit, is 100 times as long. In practice, fast vehicles usually have significant air drag, and energy lost to air drag rises quickly with speed.

Chambers 20th Century Dictionary(0.00 / 0 votes)Rate this definition:

1. Brake

   brāk, obsolete, pa.t. of Break.

2. Brake

   brāk, n. a fern: a place overgrown with ferns or briers; a thicket.—adj. Brak′y. [A doublet of Bracken; ety. dub.]

3. Brake

   brāk, n. an instrument to break flax or hemp: a harrow: a contrivance for retarding by friction the speed of carriages, wagons, trains, or revolving drums.—adj. Brake′less, without a brake.—ns. Brake′man, the man whose business it is to manage the brake of a railway-train; Brake′-van, the carriage wherein the brake is worked; Brake′-wheel, the wheel to which a brake is applied. [From root of Break; cf. Dut. braak, a flax-brake.]

4. Brake

   brāk, n. a handle, as of a pump: a lever for working a machine. [Prob. through O. Fr. brac, from L. brachium, an arm.]

Dictionary of Nautical Terms(0.00 / 0 votes)Rate this definition:

1. brake

   The handle or lever by which a common ship-pump is usually worked. It operates by means of two iron bolts, one thrust through the inner hole of it, which bolted through forms the lever axis in the iron crutch of the pump, and serves as the fulcrum for the brake, supporting it between the cheeks. The other bolt connects the extremity of the brake to the pump-spear, which draws up the spear box or piston, charged with the water in the tube; derived from brachium, an arm or lever. Also, used to check the speed of machinery by frictional force pressing on the circumference of the largest wheel acted on by leverage of the brake.

Military Dictionary and Gazetteer(0.00 / 0 votes)Rate this definition:

1. brake

   That part of the carriage of a movable battery or engine which enables it to turn.

2. brake

   An ancient engine of war analogous to the cross-bow and balista.

British National Corpus

1. Nouns Frequency

   Rank popularity for the word 'brake' in Nouns Frequency: #2896

Anagrams for brake »

1. Baker

2. Break

How to pronounce brake?

1. 

   Alex

   US English

   

   Daniel

   British

   

   Karen

   Australian

   

   Veena

   Indian

How to say brake in sign language?

Numerology

1. Chaldean Numerology

   The numerical value of brake in Chaldean Numerology is: 3

2. Pythagorean Numerology

   The numerical value of brake in Pythagorean Numerology is: 1

Examples of brake in a Sentence

1. Paul Valery:

   Man's great misfortune is that he has no organ, no kind of eyelid or brake, to mask or block a thought, or all thought, when he wants to.

2. Alexian Lien:

   A motorcyclist pulls up in front of me, and he starts speeding up, slowing down, speeding up, slowing down, at a point where he slowed down too fast and I wasn't able to brake fast enough, so I tapped him. ... He didn't wobble, he didn't fall off his bike, continued.

3. Lyndon B. Johnson:

   These Negroes, they're getting pretty uppity these days and that's a problem for us since they've got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we've got to do something about this, we've got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference. For if we don't move at all, then their allies will line up against us and there'll be no way of stopping them, we'll lose the filibuster and there'll be no way of putting a brake on all sorts of wild legislation. It'll be Reconstruction all over again.

4. Stearn Hodge:

   I still remember the CATSA agent saying,' Well, you could get a wheelchair.' How's a one-armed guy going to run a wheelchair ? how am I going to go down a ramp and brake with one hand ? But that shouldn't even have to come up.

5. Frederick Simeone:

   The car was in excellent condition out of storage, all of the original bits were there, no missing parts, only the front end was banged in, so we had to hammer that out because it was simply too ugly. The rest of the paint was dull but intact and all we had to do was get rid of the oxidation, and it came out very decent. The only things that we had to replace ended up being brake lines and a few bits of wiring.

Images & Illustrations of brake

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