A Dictionary of Cont..

Sometimes the words are interchangeable.
There is little or no difference between a broad
grin and a wide grin. A wide discussion, however,
is one that covers many topics; a broad
discussion, one that does not confine itself
within severe limits of propriety or orthodoxy.
When in doubt, consider wide the more literal,
broad the more figurative use.
broadcast. The past tense is broadcast or broadcasted.
The participle is also broadcast or broadcasted.
Broadcast is the traditional form for the past
tense and the participle. But the broadcasters
have now made broadcasted standard. In substituting
a regular verb for an irregular one they
have done a service to the language.
broadcloth, In American usage broadcloth means
a cotton shirting or dress material, usually mercerized.
It is what the English call poplin. Broadcloth
to an Englishman means a napped and
calendered woolen cloth, usually black, from
which men’s coats are made.
broadness. See breadth.
broke, broken. See break.
bronchia. This word is plural and should not be
given an additional plural ending, as in bronchiae.
brothers; brethren. Brothers is the standard term
for sons of the same mother. The singular is
used a great deal in America as a semi-facetious
form of address (You said it, brother!), as an
introduction to an informal supplication (Brother,
can you spare a dime?) and, often, just as an
exclamation (Brother! You should have seen
that guy!). All of these uses are slang.
Brethren, the archaic plural, is rarely used
except for members of religious bodies. President
Eisenhower, addressing the World Council
of Churches Assembly, in Evanston, Illinois,
August 19, 1954, besought the delegates to aid
the cause of peace together with your brethren
of other faiths. It was not a term he would have
used had he been addressing, say, the Brotherhood
of Locomotive Engineers.
The use of the term among lodge members
and in rhetorical sermons has caused it to be a
humorous word among the irreverent.
brought. See bring.
brown as a berry. No one knows a brown berry.
Some have suggested that a coffee berry is
meant, but Chaucer used the phrase (His palfrey
was as broun as is a berye) more than two hundred
years before coffee had been heard of in
England. Anyway, this pointless comparison has
been repeated ceaselessly for more than five
hundred years and is entitled to at least that
long a rest.
brown study. The brown in the clichC a brown
study has an obsolete meaning of gloomy; the
study has an obsolete meaning of reverie. The
whole phrase, brown study, however, has now
lost even the meaning of a gloomy reverie. It is
usually employed to designate an idle or purposeless
reverie, a fit of abstraction. The phrase
should be avoided.
brunch. See lunch,
brung. See bring.
brush. Certain uses of brush, as a verb and a
noun, may be regarded as Americanisms, though
some of them were formerly standard in England:
a brief, hostile encounter (He had a brush
with the customs men); lopped or broken
branches (He brought in an armload of brush);
a forceful dash (There were a good many nags
about that could beat him on a brush, but for
long drives he had few equals).
To brush up or to brush up on, in the figurative
sense of to refresh your knowledge of
(He said he had to brush up on his history
before the examination. The President said that
the House ought to brush up its economics)
must be accepted as standard.
brutal; brutish; brute; beastly; bestial. Brute, most
commonly used as an adjective in the clichd
brute force, means having the quality of some
nonhuman animal. Brutish means gross, carnal,
like an animal, lacking in civilized refinement
(When thou didst not, savage,/Know thine own
meaning, but wouldst gabble/Like a thing most
brutish). It refers most often, in modern usage,
to character.
Brutal, the most commonly used of all these
words, means cruel, inhuman, coarse. It is never
used without an implication of moral condemnation;
whereas brute, and sometimes brutish,
are free from this. Brute is usually applied to
strength, brutal to actions, brutish to thoughts
or manners.
Bestial, like brutal, implies moral condemnation,
but it is applied more to lust, uninhibited
sexuality, than to ferocity (The bestial appetites
of the brutal invaders). Beastly in standard
American usage is a synonym for bestial. The
English colloquial usage of it to mean nasty or
disagreeable (Let us not be beastly to the Hun)
is not known in America except as a humorous
mimicking of English speech.
buck. See hart.
bug; bugbear; bugaboo; buggy. Bug in American
everyday usage means almost any kind of insect
(lightning bug). In English usage, in this sense,
it is restricted to what in America is called a
bedbug and, for reasons not clear to Americans,
is an indecent word. No one in America boasts
of having bedbugs, but the bitten traveler would
not hesitate to use the word in airing his grievance.
But in England, it is not so; it is almost
an unmentionable word, possibly because of a
klang association (q.v.) with bugger (q.v.).
In America bug has come to mean defect or
difficulty (They haven’t worked all the bugs out
of the new model yet), an enthusiasm which
amounts to a disease (He’s got the tennis bug
and is on the courts all day), and a pyromaniac
(a firebug). None of these is standard.
Bug in the sense of defect and the -bug in
firebug are probably forms of bugaboo, a bogy,
some imaginary (or real) thing that causes fear
or worry. Americans retain the old form bugaboo,
while English usage has changed to bugbear.
Bug is an old form of bugaboo. The fifth
verse of the ninety-first Psalm in the King James
version reads: Thou shalt not be afraid for the
terror by night. In the Coverdale version (1535)