Brethren

How to spell brethren

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce brethren

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does brethren mean?

1. nounFellow members of a religious community, church, or fraternal organisation, used as a formal or archaic plural.

Brethren in a sentence

• The minister welcomed the assembled brethren to the evening service.

• The lodge expects its brethren to keep the meetings confidential.

Where does brethren come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Brethren is the old plural of brother, a word that English has owned since its earliest days. It descends from Old English broþor, whose plural forms broþru and later breþre showed the vowel change that gives us the modern spelling with 'breth'. The 'b-r-o-t-h-e-r' line of the family went on to take the regular -s ending and became 'brothers', the everyday plural for male siblings. Meanwhile the older mutated plural survived in the 'breth' form and picked up the same -ren ending found in 'children', leaving us with brethren. By the later medieval and early modern periods this surviving plural narrowed to mean fellow members of a church, guild, or fraternal society rather than blood relatives, which is why the spelling can trip people up: the 'e' in 'breth' rather than 'broth', and the unusual -ren ending, are both relics of a plural pattern English has otherwise abandoned.

How the word is built

• breth- (older form of brother)
• -ren (archaic plural suffix, as in children)