Also 4–6 brayne, 5–6 brane, 7 braine. [f. the sb.]
1. trans. To dash (any one’s) brains out; to kill by dashing out the brains.
1382. Wyclif, Isa. lxvi. 3. That sleth a beste, as that brayne a dogge.
1489. Caxton, Faytes of A., II. xxxvii. 156. Thenne shall they of the towne brayne hem with stones.
1596. Shaks., 1 Hen. IV., II. iii. 24. If I were now by this Rascall, I could braine him with his Ladies Fan.
1615. G. Sandys, Trav., 45. Hee desperately brained himselfe.
1691. Wood, Ath. Oxon., I. 31. He was most cruelly murder’d, by being brain’d like an Ox.
1884. Tennyson, Becket, 201. Methought they would have brain’d me with it, John.
fig. 1603. Shaks., Meas. for M., V. i. 401. It was the swift celeritie of his death … That brain’d my purpose.
† 2. To conceive in the brain. Obs. rare.
1611. Shaks., Cymb., V. iv. 147. Such stuffe as Madmen Tongue and braine not.
3. To furnish with a brain.
1882. W. B. Weeden, Soc. Law Labor, 94. Both the labor and capital must be headed, brained, as it were, with thought.
Hence, Brainer, Braining vbl. sb.
c. 1440. Promp. Parv., 47. Braynynge, or kyllynge, excerebracio.
1842. De Quincey, Wks. (1863), XIII. 306. Not only the stone must be a bouncer … but it ought to be … a good brainer, viz., splinting-jagged.
