bracket

English Online Dictionary. What means bracket‎? What does bracket mean?

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈbɹækɪt/
• Rhymes: -ækɪt

Etymology 1

From earlier bragget, *bracket, from Middle English *braget, *braket (attested in braket nail), from Old French braguette (“the opening in the fore part of a pair of breeches, one's fly”), a diminutive of Old French brague (“knickers, britches”), from Old Occitan braga, from Latin brāca (“pants”), from Transalpine Gaulish *brāca, from Proto-Germanic *brāks, an early form of Proto-Germanic *brōks (“leggings, breeches, trousers”).

Noun

bracket (plural brackets)

2. A fixture attached to a wall to hold up a shelf.
3. (engineering) Any intermediate object that connects a smaller part to a larger part, the smaller part typically projecting sideways from the larger part.
4. (nautical) A short crooked timber, resembling a knee, used as a support.
5. (military) The cheek or side of an ordnance carriage, supporting the trunnions.
7. Any of the characters “(”, “)”, “[”, “]”, “{”, “}”, “⟨”, “⟩”, “<”, “>”, or the like, used in pairs to enclose parenthetic remarks, sections of mathematical expressions, etc.
   1. (UK) “(” and “)” specifically, the other forms above requiring adjectives for disambiguation.
   2. (US) “[” and “]” specifically, as opposed to the other forms, which have their own technical names.
8. (sports) A diagram of games in a tournament.
9. (sports) A prediction of the outcome of games in a tournament, used for betting purposes.
10. One of several ranges of numbers.

11. (algebra) A pair of values that represent the smallest and largest elements of a range.
12. (military) Typically of stationary weapons, the zone enclosed by one long and one short shot impact expected to be hit very accurately.
13. (typography) The small curved or angular corner formed by a serif and a stroke in a letter.
14. (land surveying, 19th century) a mark cut into a stone by land surveyors to secure a bench.

Synonyms

• ("(" and ")"): parentheses, parens
• (land surveying): benchmark

Hyponyms

• See also Thesaurus:bracket

Derived terms

Translations

See also

Punctuation

Verb

bracket (third-person singular simple present brackets, present participle bracketing, simple past and past participle bracketed)

1. To support by means of mechanical brackets.
2. To enclose in typographical brackets.
3. To bound on both sides, to surround, as enclosing with brackets.
4. To place in the same category.
5. To mark distinctly for special treatment.
6. To set aside, discount, ignore.
   • 2009, Michael Erard, “Holy Grammar, Inc.”, in Search Magazine, July–August 2009:

     SIL got access to academic legitimacy; linguists bracketed the evangelical engine that drives SIL because they got access to data and tools.

7. (military) To gauge the range of a target by firing equally short and long of it and ranging the weapon between the two to achieve a very accurate hit.
8. (photography) To take multiple images of the same subject, using a range of exposure settings, in order to help ensure that a satisfactory image is obtained.
9. (philosophy, phenomenology) In the philosophical system of Edmund Husserl and his followers, to set aside metaphysical theories and existential questions concerning what is real in order to focus philosophical attention simply on the actual content of experience.

Translations

Etymology 2

Noun

bracket (uncountable)

1. Alternative form of bragget (“drink made with ale and honey”)

Anagrams

• betrack

Spanish

Alternative forms

• bráket
• bráquet

Etymology

Pseudo-anglicism, derived from bracket.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈbɾaket/ [ˈbɾa.ket̪]
• Rhymes: -aket

Noun

bracket m (plural brackets)

1. (in the plural, orthodontics) braces (a device worn on the teeth to straighten them)

   Synonyms: aparatos, aparatos dentales, frenos, frenillo

2. bracket (diagram representing the sequence of games in a sports tournament)

Further reading

• “bracket”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 2024 December 10
• bracket | FundéuRAE (fundeu.es)