bowlne, swollen. Surrey, tr. of Aeneid ii, l. 348. See [bollen].
bowne, a bound, limit. Warner, Albion’s England, bk. v. ch. 23. st. 45. In the same, st. 1 ‘the former bowne’ seems to mean ‘the preceding chapter’. Norm. Fr. bowne (bodne), ‘limite’ (Moisy). Cp. Med. Lat. bonna, bodina (Ducange).
bowne, a boon, a favour in answer to a request. Mirror for Mag., Cobham, st. 45; Adam Bel, 509, in Hazlitt’s Pop. Poetry, ii. 160. Icel. bōn, a prayer.
bowrs, bowers, muscles that bend the joints, strong muscles. Spenser, F. Q. i. 8. 12. Lit. bow-er, i.e. that which bows or bends; see NED.
box-keeper, the keeper of the dice and box at a gaming-table; ‘Gettall, a box-keeper’, Massinger, City Madam (Dramatis Personae).
boyn, to swell. ‘Her heeles behind boynd out’, Golding, Metam. viii. 808; fol. 105 (1603). Cp. boine, bunny, Essex words for a swelling caused by a blow (EDD.). OF. buyne (now bigne); see Hatzfeld.
brabble, to wrangle, quarrel, Coles, Dict. (1679); brabble, a quarrel, brawl, Twelfth Nt. v. 1. 69; Titus And. ii. 1. 62; hence, brabbler, a quarreller, King John, v. 2. 162; brabbling, Middleton, A Fair Quarrel, i. 1 (Colonel); ‘Noe more brabbling with him’ (your old Glasier), Dorothy Wadham, Letter (1614), in T. G. Jackson’s Wadham College (1893, p. 161). Du. ‘brabbelen, to brawle or to brabble’ (Hexham).
brace, to gird, encompass. ‘Bigge Bulles of Basan brace hem about’, Spenser, Shep. Kal., Sept., 124. OF. bracier, to embrace, deriv. of brace, the two arms (Ch. Rol., 1343).
bracer, braser, a protection for the arm in archery. Ascham, Toxophilus, pp. 108, 109.
brach, a bitch-hound. Properly a kind of hunting-dog; but it came to be used with reference to a bitch in general. Webster, White Devil (Flamineo), ed. Dyce, p. 48; Massinger, Unnat. Combat, iv. 2 (Belgarde); King Lear, i. 4. 125. OF. brac, hunting-dog (Didot). OHG. bracco (Schade).