Breviary. The name given to an abridgment of the daily prayers, for the use of priests, during the Seven Canonical Hours, made by Pope Gregory VII. in the eleventh century.
Brevier. The style of type originally employed in the composition of the Catholic “Breviary.”
Bridegroom. The word groom comes from the Gothic and Anglo-Saxon guma, man, allied to the Latin homo, man. It still expresses a man-servant who grooms or attends to his master’s horse.
Bride Lane. From the church of St Bride or Bridget.
Bride of the Sea. Venice, in allusion to the ancient ceremony of “The Marriage of the Adriatic.”
Bridewell. The name anciently given to a female penitentiary, from the original establishment near the well of St Bride or Bridget in the parish of Blackfriars. The name is preserved in Bridewell Police Station.
Brigadier. The commanding officer of a brigade.
Bridge. Twenty years ago two families at Great Dalby, Leicestershire, paid each other a visit on alternate nights, for a game of what they called Russian whist. Their way lay across a broken bridge, very dangerous after nightfall. “Thank goodness, it’s your bridge to-morrow night!” they were wont to exclaim on parting. This gave the name to the game itself.
Bridge of Sighs. The bridge forming a covered gallery over the Canal at Venice between the State prisons on the one hand and the palace of the Doges on the other. Prisoners were led to the latter to hear the death sentence pronounced, and thence to execution. No State prisoner was ever known to recross this bridge; hence its name.
Bridgewater Square. From the town house of the Earls of Bridgewater.