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bran.

The broken coat of the seed of wheat, rye, or other cereal grain, separated from the flour or meal by sifting or bolting; the coarse, chaffy part of ground grain.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈbɹæn/Received-Pronunciation, US
  1. The broken coat of the seed of wheat, rye, or other cereal grain, separated from the flour or meal by sifting or bolting; the coarse, chaffy part of ground grain.

    countable · uncountable
Where this word comes from

From Middle English bran, branne, bren, from Old French bren, bran (“bran, filth”), from Gaulish brennos (“rotten”), from Proto-Celtic *bragnos (“rotten, foul”) (compare Welsh braen (“stench”), Irish bréan (“rancid”), Walloon brin (“excrement”)), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰreHg- (compare Latin fragrāre (“to smell strongly”), Dutch brak (“hound”)).

verb/ˈbɹæn/Received-Pronunciation, US
  1. To clean (metal) using a branner.

    transitive
Where this word comes from

From Middle English bran, branne, bren, from Old French bren, bran (“bran, filth”), from Gaulish brennos (“rotten”), from Proto-Celtic *bragnos (“rotten, foul”) (compare Welsh braen (“stench”), Irish bréan (“rancid”), Walloon brin (“excrement”)), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰreHg- (compare Latin fragrāre (“to smell strongly”), Dutch brak (“hound”)).

noun
  1. The European carrion crow.

Where this word comes from

From a Celtic source; compare Welsh brân and Cornish bran.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.