Select Search ----- All Bartleby.com ----- All Reference ----- Columbia Encyclopedia World History Encyclopedia Cultural Literacy World Factbook Columbia Gazetteer American Heritage Coll. Dictionary Roget's Thesauri Roget's II: Thesaurus Roget's Int'l Thesaurus Quotations Bartlett's Quotations Columbia Quotations Simpson's Quotations Respectfully Quoted English Usage Modern Usage American English Fowler's King's English Strunk's Style Mencken's Language Cambridge History The King James Bible Oxford Shakespeare Gray's Anatomy Farmer's Cookbook Post's Etiquette Brewer's Phrase & Fable Bulfinch's Mythology Frazer's Golden Bough ----- All Verse ----- Anthologies Dickinson, E. Eliot, T.S. Frost, R. Hopkins, G.M. Keats, J. Lawrence, D.H. Masters, E.L. Sandburg, C. Sassoon, S. Whitman, W. Wordsworth, W. Yeats, W.B. ----- All Nonfiction ----- Harvard Classics American Essays Einstein's Relativity Grant, U.S. Roosevelt, T. Wells's History Presidential Inaugurals ----- All Fiction ----- Shelf of Fiction Ghost Stories Short Stories Shaw, G.B. Stein, G. Stevenson, R.L. Wells, H.G. Reference > American Heritage® > Dictionary   brake3 brake5   CONTENTS · INDEX · ILLUSTRATIONS · BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD    The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition.  2000.   brake4   PRONUNCIATION:   brk NOUN: 1. Any of various ferns of the genus Pteris having pinnately compound leaves and including several popular houseplants. 2. Any of certain other ferns, such as the bracken or the cliff brake. ETYMOLOGY: Middle English, probably back-formation from braken. See bracken.     The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. CONTENTS · INDEX · ILLUSTRATIONS · BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD   brake3 brake5     Click here to shop the Bartleby Bookstore. Welcome · Press · Advertising · Linking · Terms of Use · © 2008 Bartleby.com