or hair-brained, adj. (old colloquial: now recognised).—Reckless; flighty; impudent; skittish. Also, substantively, HARE-BRAIN = a harebrained person.

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  1534.  UDALL, Roister Doister, I., iv., p. 27 (ARBER).

          R. Royster.  Ah foolish HAREBRAINE,
This is not she.

2

  1592.  NASHE, Pierce Penilesse, His Supplication to the Divell, in Wks., ii., 53. A HAREBRAIND little Dwarfe it is.

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  1621.  BURTON, The Anatomy of Melancholy, I., III., I., ii., 259 (1836). Yet again, many of them, desperate HARE-BRAINS.

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  1622.  BACON, History of the Reign of King Henry VII. That same HAIRE-BRAINE wild fellow my subject the Earl of Suffolk.

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  1751.  SMOLLETT, Peregrine Pickle, ch. xliii. When the government of a nation depends upon the caprice of the ignorant, HAIR-BRAINED vulgar.

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  1870.  Chambers’ Miscellany, No. S3, p. 28. The Slater girls are as HARE-BRAINED as herself.

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