Brine

How to spell brine

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce brine

What does brine mean?

1. nounWater strongly saturated with salt, used for preserving or seasoning food.
2. verbTo soak or treat food in salt water before cooking.

Brine in a sentence

• noun

  The olives were stored in a jar of brine at the back of the fridge.

• verb

  Many cooks brine the chicken for several hours to keep it juicy.

• noun

  She soaked the turkey overnight in a brine flavoured with herbs and sugar.

• verb

  You can brine pork chops in a simple salt and sugar solution.

Where does brine come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Brine descends from the Old English word bryne, which simply meant salt water or the strong salty liquid used to preserve food. It has close cousins in the other Germanic languages of the North Sea coast, including Middle Dutch brine and modern Dutch brijn, which points to a shared word among the seafaring peoples who salted fish and meat for the winter. Beyond that Germanic family the deeper origin is genuinely obscure, and scholars have never agreed on an older root, so its ultimate source is unknown. Across the centuries the spelling settled on the simple form we use today, where the long 'i' sound is signalled by the silent final 'e' rather than by any double letter. Because the word stayed short and changed little, it is one of the more stable survivals of everyday Old English, still doing the same kitchen and preserving work it did a thousand years ago.

How the word is built

• brine (single root; from Old English bryne meaning salt water, no prefix or suffix)