Brawl

How to spell brawl

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce brawl

What does brawl mean?

1. nounA rough, noisy fight or quarrel, usually involving several people.
2. verbTo fight or quarrel in a rough, noisy way.

Brawl in a sentence

• noun

  A brawl broke out between two groups of fans outside the stadium.

• verb

  The two men began to brawl in the street after the football match.

• noun

  Police were called to break up a late-night brawl in the car park.

• verb

  Security guards stepped in before the rival fans could brawl on the concourse.

Where does brawl come from?

Language of origin: Other

Brawl appears in English in the late 1300s, first as the verb braulen, meaning to quarrel noisily or to scold loudly. Its precise origin is genuinely uncertain, but it is widely thought to be either imitative of a harsh, clamorous sound or borrowed from a continental relative such as the Old French brailler, meaning to bawl or cry out, and the Dutch brallen, meaning to boast or make a din. The early sense leaned more toward loud verbal squabbling than physical violence, and only over time did the meaning settle on the rowdy, fists-flying fight we picture today. The single 'aw' vowel spelled with the 'aw' digraph is the only real trap, since the word otherwise reads exactly as it sounds. It is unrelated to 'brawn', despite the similar look, so the missing 'n' is worth noting.

How the word is built

• brawl (a single root word with no prefix or suffix; of uncertain, possibly imitative origin)