Forms: 1 brún, 3 brun(e, 3–4 broun, 3–6 broune, 4–7 browne, (5 browyn), 5– brown. [Common Teut.: OE. brún = OFris. brûn (MDu. bruun, Du. bruin), OHG. (MHG., MLG.) brûn, (mod.Ger. braun), ON. brún-n (Sw. brun, Da. bruun):—OTeut. *brûn-o-z, *brûn-â, corresp. to Lith. brunas brown:—Aryan type *bhrû-no·-s, root *bhru-: cf. BEAVER. Adopted in Romanic, giving med.L. brūnus, It., Sp., Pg. bruno, Pr. and F. brun, whence also brunir to BURNISH, q.v. (OHG. brûn meant ‘glänzend’ shining, as well as ‘dunkel-farbig’ dark-colored.)
The shade to which the name was given was originally a dark one, as seen by sense 1; also by Johnson’s sole explanation ‘The name of a colour, compounded of black and any other colour.’ Levins, Manip., 1570 has ‘Broune, black, ater; Broune fuscus.’ Very dark brown is close to black, as in the so-called ‘black’ hair of men.]
1. Dusky, dark. (Now only poetic, and regarded as transf. from sense 2.)
a. 1000. Metr. Boeth., xxvi. 58. Sio brune yð.
c. 1325. E. E. Allit. P., A. 536. Sone þe worlde bycom wel broun, Þe sunne watz doun.
c. 1400. Maundev., 160. Here colour is liche Vyolet, or more browne than the Violettes.
c. 1449. Pol. Poems (1859), II. 221. Oure welevette hatte, That keueryd us from mony stormys browne.
1667. Milton, P. L., IX. 1088. Where highest Woods … spread thir umbrage broad, And brown as Evening.
a. 1725. Pope, Odyss., XVII. 215. Or ere brown evening spreads her chilly shade.
1792. S. Rogers, Pleas. Mem., I. 15. Arched with ivy’s brownest shade.
1854. Tennyson, To Maurice, iv. I watch the twilight falling brown.
b. fig. Gloomy, serious. See BROWN STUDY.
2. The proper name of a composite color produced by a mixture of orange and black (or of red, yellow and black), and varying greatly in shade according to the proportion of the constituents, as a red brown, yellowish brown, dark brown. Brown is the color produced by partial charring or carbonization of starch or woody fiber, as in toasted bread or potatoes, peat, lignite, withered leaves, etc.
a. 1300. Cursor M., 18833. His hare [was] like to þe nute brun, Quen it for ripnes fals dun.
1393. Langl., P. Pl., C. IX. 330. Ale … of þe best and Brounest þat brewesters sellen.
c. 1420. Liber Cocorum (1862), 32. Lay hur [the gose] to fyre and rost hyr browne.
c. 1440. Promp. Parv., 54. Browne, fuscus, subniger, nigellus.
1600. Shaks., A. Y. L., III. iv. 9. Ros. His very haire Is of the dissembling colour. Cel. Something browner then Iudasses.
1725. Lond. Gaz., No. 6381/4. With a good Stock of Pale and Brown Beer.
1708. Mrs. Centlivre, Busie Body, I. i. 13. My last Refuge, a brown Musquet.
1766. Pennant, Zool. (1768), I. 457. The head and whole upper part [of the female sparrow] are brown.
1799. Southey, Nondescr., Snuff, Black, brown dust, From the oft reiterated pinch profuse.
1805. Scott, Last Minstrel, VI. ii. Land of brown heath and shaggy wood.
1859. Jephson, Brittany, i. 2. The brown rocky stream.
b. Used in naming varieties or species of animals, plants, minerals, etc., as brown ant, bear, owl; brown willow; brown hæmatite, etc.
c. 1460. J. Russell, Bk. Nurture, in Babees Bk. (1868), 183. The makyng of a bathe medicinable … Brown fenelle.
1767. G. White, Selborne, xi. (1789), 31. The young of the brown owl will eat indiscriminately all that is brought.
1843. Portlock, Geol., 225. Earthy Brown Hæmatite, both compact and decomposed.
1861. Miss Pratt, Flower. Pl., VI. 69. Brown Bent-grass.
1868. Wood, Homes without H., vii. 126. The most admirable subterranean architecture is perhaps that of the Brown Ant.
1882. Garden, 28 Jan., 62/3. Lettuces … the best of all for winter, the old Brown Cos.
1884. St. James’s Gaz., 7 Aug., 4/2. On some estates in Scotland … a brown hare is now rarely seen.
3. Of persons: Having the skin of a brown or dusky color: a. as a racial characteristic; b. as an individual peculiarity among ‘white’ races; either natural (dark-complexioned, brunette), or as an effect of exposure (sunburnt, tanned).
a. 1000. Cædmon’s Ex., 70 (Bosw.). Brune leode.
c. 1384. Chaucer, H. Fame, 139. Vulcano That in his face was ful broune.
1398. Trevisa, Barth. De P. R., IV. ii. (1495), 80. In hoote countrees comen forth blacke men and broun.
c. 1420. Chron. Vilod., 505. Þaw þu be broune þu art ryȝt welle shape and fere.
1589. Warner, Alb. Eng., V. xxvi. 127. That browne Girle of mine.
1613. Shaks., Hen. VIII., III. ii. 295. When the browne Wench Lay kissing in your Armes.
a. 1763. Shenstone, Odes (1765), 226. Brown exercise will lead thee where she reigns.
1764. Goldsm., Trav., 416. Where … the brown Indian marks with murd’rous aim.
1834. M. G. Lewis, Jrnl. W. Ind., 53. The fair sex elsewhere are called the ‘Brown Girls’ in Jamaica.
1864. Tennyson, En. Ard., 704. Enoch was so brown, so bow’d, So broken.
† 4. In reference to the sword, steel, etc., it seems to have meant: Burnished, glistening. Obs. [With the sense cf. MDu. brun ‘shining’ (Kalkar), and F. brunir to BURNISH.]
c. 1325. E. E. Allit. P., A. 989. Brende golde bryȝt, As glemande glas burnist broun.
c. 1380. Sir Ferumb., 5609. Wyþ ys swerd of style broun.
c. 1460. Lybeaus Disc., 552. Swordes bryght and broune.
a. 1802. Ballad ‘Cospatrick,’ xxii. in Child, Ballads, I. 70/2. My bonny brown sword.
5. To do brown: perhaps, ‘to do thoroughly,’ suggested by roasting; to deceive, ‘take in.’ slang.
a. 1600. John Bon, 162, in Hazl., E. P. P., IV. 16. Ha! browne done!
1837. Dickens, Pickwick, xliii. ‘He goes in rayther raw, Sammy,’ said Mr. Weller … ‘and he’ll come out done so ex-ceedin’ brown that his most formiliar friends won’t know him.’
1840. Barham, Ingol. Leg., Execution. We are all of us done so uncommonly brown!
† b. Cf. round. Obs.
1611. Chapman, May Daye, Plays, 1873, II. 338. You haue a whole browne dozen a suters at least.
6. Comb. General relations: a. qualifying the names of other colors: as brown-bay, -green, -pink, -red; b. parasynthetic, as brown-barrelled, -bearded, -colo(u)red, -complexioned, -edged, -eyed, -faced, -haired, -headed, -leaved (-leafed), -locked, -roofed, -sailed, skinned, -stemmed; c. brown-wash v. (nonce-wd.).
1594. Blundevil, Exerc., V. xii. (ed. 7), 558. The other nations under the hot Zone, be of colour *browne bay, like a Chesnut.
1753. Scots Mag., Aug., 421/1. Thomas Hall Esq.’s brown-bay gelding.
1882. J. Hawthorne, Fort. Fool, I. xi. One big *brown-bearded fellow.
1835–6. Todd, Cycl. Anat. & Phys., I. 41/1, note. Eight *brown-coloured masses.
1704. in Lond. Gaz., No. 4034/4. John Jackson … aged near 40, *brown Complectioned.
1824–30. Miss Mitford, Village, Ser. IV. (1863), 314. Delf, blue and white, *brown-edged and green-edged.
1865. Miss Yonge, Clever Wom., I. iii. 56. A brown-haired, *brown-eyed child of seven.
1882. Garden, 10 June, 400/1. The downy, *brown-green young shoots.
1686. Lond. Gaz., No. 2100/4. A tall slender Man, *brown hair’d.
1837. Carlyle, Fr. Rev., III. V. iv. 279. Church Formulas seemed to flourish; a little *brown-leaved or so, but not browner than of late years.
1855. J. Edwards, Paint. in Oil Colours, 27. *Brown Pink … is a rich transparent olive, inclining sometimes to green, and sometimes towards the warmth of orange.
1835. Hawthorne, Amer. Note-bks. (1871), I. 14. Some of the oaks are now a deep *brown red.
1744. Mitchell, in Phil. Trans., XLIII. 112. Like the Skin of many *brown-skinn’d white People.
1795. Southey, Lett. fr. Spain (1799), 106. Rubbed over, or rather *brown-washed, with clay.
7. Special combs.: † brown baker, a baker of brown bread; † brown bastard, a sweet wine (see BASTARD 4); brown blaze (see quot.); brown coal, a name given to lignite, and to some varieties of coal intermediate between lignite and true coal; brown-fly, an artificial fly used in angling; brown gannet, brown gull, names of the Booby (Sula fusca); brown gum, ‘the inspissated juice of the Eucalyptus resinifera’ (Syd. Soc. Lex.); brown-heart, a species of tree in Guiana; brown-hen, the female of the Black Grouse (Tetrao tetrix); brown-holland (see HOLLAND); brown jolly, West-Indian corruption of BRINJAL; brown mould, Mucor mucedo and other fungi found on decaying fruit, etc.; brown ochre, a variety of limonite; also the pigment prepared from it; brown rust, a disease of wheat caused by a parasitic fungus (Trichobasis rubigo vera); brown-sleeve a., wearing brown sleeves; brown-spar (Min.), a variety of dolomite; also applied to varieties of the allied minerals ankerite and magnesite, and to chalybite or native ferrous carbonate; brown-stone (see quot.); brown stout, a superior kind of porter; brown sugar, unrefined or partially refined sugar as opposed to crystallized or loaf-sugar; brown-thrasher, ‘the (American) Ferruginous Thrush, called also the Brown Thrush, Turdus rufus’ (Bartlett); brown ware, a common kind of pottery. See also BROWN BESS, BROWN BREAD, BROWN GEORGE, BROWN PAPER, BROWN STUDY.
1528. in Turner, Sel. Records Oxford, 58. Ye corporation of Ye browne bakers.
1656. J. Reeve, Lett., in Wks. (1832), III. Suppl. 5. In Trinity Lane, over against a *Brown Baker’s.
1720. Stow’s Surv. (ed. Strype, 1754), II. V. xiv. 312/2. The Company of the Brown bakers, a Society of long standing and continuance.
1603. Shaks., Meas. for M., III. ii. 4. We shall haue all the world drinke *browne and white bastard.
1609. Ev. Woman in Hum., I. i. in Bullen, O. Pl., IV. A Figge for Browne-bastard.
1854. Scoffern, in Orr’s Circ. Sc., Chem. 458. The first portions of volatile matter which pass over when zinc ore is distilled in contact with carbonaceous matter, and which on account of their burning with a brown flame, are called by the technical name of *brown blaze, contain very little zinc, and are chiefly composed of arsenic and cadmium.
1833. Lyell, Princ. Geol., III. 199. This *brown coal consists of … beds of lignite of various thickness interstratified with the clays and sands.
1878. Lawrence, trans. Cotta’s Rocks Class., 321. Brown coal … differs from ordinary black coal in containing a much greater proportion of bitumen.
1787. Best, Angling (ed. 2), 111. The *Brown-fly, or Dun-Drake … its wings are made off the feather of a Pheasant’s wing, which … exactly resembles the wing of the fly.
1796. Stedman, Surinam, II. xxviii. 335. The *brown-heart is in hardness of the same consistency as the purple-heart, and the green-heart.
1756. P. Browne, Jamaica, 173. The *Brown-Jolly or Bolangena … was first imported into Jamaica by the Jews.
1814. Lunan, Hortus Jamaic., I. 280. It is sometimes called brown jolly or mad-apple.
1883. Gd. Words, Nov., 732/1. In the *brown-mould quite a different arrangement prevails.
1823. P. Nicholson, Pract. Build., 415. *Brown-Ochre is a warm brown or foul orange colour.
1855. J. Edwards, Paint. Oil Colours, 19. Brown Ochre … is a dark ochre of great value in landscape painting…. It is of a dark brownish yellow.
1840. Browning, Sordello, IV. 395. I Was just a *brown-sleeve brother.
1843. Portlock, Geol., 214. Bitter spar, or *Brown spar, occurs in small but well-defined crystals.
1803. R. C. Dallas, Hist. Maroons, I. iv. 91. One might as well expect a London drayman to prefer pale small beer to *brown stout.
1875. trans. Vogel’s Chem. Light, xvii. 270. Hyper-oxide of manganese also named *brownstone.
1704. Lond. Gaz., No. 4032/4. Her Cargo, consisting chiefly of *Brown Sugar.
1840. Barham, Ingol. Leg., Wedding D. As ‘best-refined loaf’ to the coarsest ‘brown sugar.’
a. 1847. C. Mathews, Wks., 125 (Bartlett). I love the city as dearly as a *brown thrasher loves the green tree that sheltered its young.
1856. Bryant, Rivulet, i. List the brown thrasher’s vernal hymn.
1836. Scenes Commerce by Land & S., 150. Common *brown ware is made in many places; and a very neat and superior sort is manufactured at Nottingham.
