Bra
nounA woman's undergarment worn to support the breasts.
How to spell bra
3 letters · 1 syllable
How to pronounce bra
What does bra mean?
- nounA woman's undergarment worn to support the breasts.
Bra in a sentence
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She bought a new bra that fitted far better than the old one.
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The shop offers a free fitting service to find the right bra size.
Where does bra come from?
Language of origin: French
The word is a twentieth-century shortening of 'brassiere', which English borrowed from French in the early 1900s. In French, 'brassiere' originally meant a child's vest or a kind of bodice, and it traces back to the Old French 'braciere', a guard worn on the arm, built on 'bras' meaning 'arm', itself from the Latin 'bracchium' for 'arm'. Interestingly, the French word never carried the modern English meaning of a woman's undergarment; that sense developed in English-speaking countries. By the 1930s the snappier clipped form 'bra' had taken over in everyday speech and writing. The very short spelling rarely causes trouble, though the surprise is that its arm-related ancestor 'bracchium' also lurks behind the word 'brace'.
How the word is built
- Shortened form of 'brassiere'; the clipped element 'bra-' standing in for the whole word
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