BRAVA, n.p. A sea-port on the east coast of Africa, lat. 1° 7′ N., long. 44° 3′, properly Barāwa.
1516.—"... a town of the Moors, well walled, and built of good stone and whitewash, which is called Brava.... It is a place of trade, which has already been destroyed by the Portuguese, with great slaughter of the inhabitants...."—Barbosa, 15.
BRAZIL-WOOD, s. This name is now applied in trade to the dye-wood imported from Pernambuco, which is derived from certain species of Caesalpinia indigenous there. But it originally applied to a dye-wood of the same genus which was imported from India, and which is now known in trade as [Sappan] (q.v.). [It is the andam or baḳḳam of the Arabs (Burton, Ar. Nights, iii. 49).] The history of the word is very curious. For when the name was applied to the newly discovered region in S. America, probably, as Barros alleges, because it produced a dye-wood similar in character to the brazil of the East, the trade-name gradually became appropriated to the S. American product, and was taken away from that of the E. Indies. See some further remarks in Marco Polo, 2nd ed., ii. 368-370 [and Encycl. Bibl. i. 120].
This is alluded to also by Camões (x. 140):
"But here where Earth spreads wider, ye shall claim
realms by the ruddy Dye-wood made renown'd;
these of the 'Sacred Cross' shall win the name:
by your first Navy shall that world be found."
Burton.
The medieval forms of brazil were many; in Italian it is generally verzi, verzino, or the like.