[f. as prec. + -ING2.] That braces, girds, etc. Now used chiefly of the air or climate, formerly of tonic medicines.
1750. Rutty, in Phil. Trans., LI. 476. A powerful … bracing medicine.
1821. Keats, Isabel, xxiv. With belt and spur and bracing huntsman’s dress.
1850. Mrs. Stowe, Uncle Tom’s C., xv. 129. The cold of a more bracing climate.
1871. Napheys, Prev. & Cure Dis., I. v. 154. Dry heat is bracing.
Hence Bracingly adv., in a bracing manner, so as to brace. Bracingness, bracing quality.
1874. Ellacombe, in Church Bells, 15 Sept. (1883), 808/1. The bolts had better be put in bracingly, that is, not perpendicularly.
1876. L. A. Tollemache, in Fortn. Rev., March, 341. It [the Engadine] has, moreover, what may be termed a graduated scale of bracingness.
