Brake

English Meaning

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.

1. A device for slowing or stopping motion, as of a vehicle, especially by contact friction.
2. Something that slows or stops action.
3. To reduce the speed of with or as if with a brake.
4. To operate or apply a brake.
5. To be slowed or stopped by or as if by the operation of a brake.
6. A toothed device for crushing and beating flax or hemp.
7. A heavy harrow for breaking clods of earth.
8. An apparatus for kneading large amounts of dough.
9. A machine for bending and folding sheet metal.
10. To crush (flax or hemp) in a toothed device.
11. To break up (clods of earth) with a harrow.
12. A lever or handle on a machine such as a pump.
13. Any of various ferns of the genus Pteris having pinnately compound leaves and including several popular houseplants.
14. Any of certain other ferns, such as the bracken or the cliff brake.
15. An area overgrown with dense brushwood, briers, and undergrowth; a thicket.
16. Variant of break.
17. Archaic A past tense of break.