Bracket

How to spell bracket

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce bracket

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does bracket mean?

1. nounA projecting piece of metal, wood, or plastic fixed to a wall to support a shelf or other object.
2. nounOne of a pair of marks, such as ( ) or [ ], used in writing to enclose words or figures.
3. nounA range or category defined by upper and lower limits, especially of income, tax, or age.
4. verbTo enclose words in brackets, or to group items together as similar.

Bracket in a sentence

• noun

  He screwed a metal bracket into the wall to hold the shelf.

• noun

  The editor asked her to put the date inside a square bracket in the citation.

• noun

  The pay rise pushed him into a higher tax bracket.

• verb

  The style guide says to bracket any editorial note added to a quotation.

• noun

  The curtain rail came loose because one bracket had rusted through.

• noun

  The formula failed because she forgot to close the opening bracket.

Where does bracket come from?

Language of origin: French

Bracket appears in English in the late 1500s, first as an architectural term for a small projecting support that holds up a shelf, cornice, or beam. The likeliest source is the French braguette, a diminutive of brague meaning 'breeches', which itself goes back to the Latin braca, a word for trousers that the Romans probably picked up from the Gauls. The connection is visual rather than literal: an early stone support jutting out from a wall was thought to resemble the shape of a codpiece, the padded front piece of Renaissance breeches. From that physical fixture the meaning widened, and by the mid 1700s printers were calling the paired marks that enclose text 'brackets' because they seemed to prop up or frame the words between them. In the late 1800s the idea of things grouped within boundaries gave us the modern figurative sense of an income or age bracket. Because the word ends in a single -et after a single -t sound, writers sometimes hesitate over doubling, but it keeps the single French-derived ending throughout.

How the word is built

• bracket (from French braguette, diminutive of brague: breeches)
• no further affix