broken beer, remnants or leavings of beer in pots and glasses. Founded on the phrases broken meat, bread, or victuals, meaning fragments of meat, &c. Cartwright, The Ordinary, i. 4 (Slicer). So also broken bread, The London Chanticleers, sc. 1 (Heath).
broken music, concerted music, music arranged for parts. As You Like It, i. 2. 150; Hen. V, v. 2. 263; Tr. and Cr. iii. 1. 52.
brokle, brittle, frail. Sir T. Elyot, bk. iii, c. 19, § 1. See [bruckle].
bronstrops, a prostitute. ‘A bronstrops is in English a hippocrene’, Middleton, A Fair Quarrel, iv. 1 (Col.’s Friend); id. iv. 4 (Chough); Webster, Cure for Cuckold, iv. 1.
brothel, an abandoned wretch; ‘Go hence, thou brothel’, Calisto and Melibaea, in Hazlitt’s Dodsley, i. 82; ‘bitched brothel’, World and Child, in the same, i. 254. ME. brothell, a worthless fellow (Gower, C. A. vii. 2595).
brouse, brouze, young shoots of trees, eaten by cattle. Fitzherbert, Husbandry, § 132. 3; Spenser, F. Q. iii. 10. 45.
brown bill, a weapon, a kind of halbert. 2 Hen. VI, iv. 10. 13; King Lear, iv. 6. 92.
bruckel’d, begrimed, dirty. Herrick, The Temple, 58. In use in the north country and in East Anglia, see EDD. (s.v. Bruckle, vb.2).
bruckle, brittle, fragile. Puttenham, E. Poesie, p. 219. In prov. use in various parts of England, and in Scotland and Ireland (EDD.). OE. brucol. See [brokle], [brickle].
bruit, a rumour, report. 3 Hen. VI, iv. 7. 64; Timon, v. 1. 198; to noise abroad, 2 Hen. IV, i. 1. 114; 1 Hen. VI, iii. 3. 68. F. bruit, noise, rumour.