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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

brit.

To break in pieces; divide.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

verb/bɹɪt/
  1. To break in pieces; divide.

    transitive
  2. To bruise; indent.

    transitive
  3. To fall out or shatter (as overripe hops or grain).

    intransitive
  4. To fade away; alter.

    dialectal · intransitive
Where this word comes from

From Middle English brytten, brutten, from Old English brittian, bryttian (“to divide, dispense, distribute, rule over, possess, enjoy the use of”), from Proto-Germanic *brutjaną (“to break, divide”), from Proto-Germanic *breutaną (“to destroy, crush, break”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰrewd- (“to break”). Cognate with Icelandic brytja (“to chop up, break in pieces, slaughter”), Swedish bryta (“to break, fracture, cut off”), Danish bryde (“to break”), and outside the Germanic family with Albanian brydh (“to make crumbly, friable, soft”). Related to Old English brytta (“dispenser, giver, author, governor, prince”), Old English brēotan (“to break in pieces, hew down, demolish, destroy, kill”).

noun/bɹɪt/
  1. One of the young of herrings, sprats, etc.

  2. One of the tiny crustaceans, of the genus Calanus, that are part of the diet of right whales.

Where this word comes from

Probably from Middle English bret or birt, applied to a different kind of fish. See bret.

noun/bɹɪt/
  1. brit milah

  2. A covenant, specifically that between God and the Jewish people.

Where this word comes from

Borrowed from Hebrew בְּרִית.

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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.