Brunt

How to spell brunt

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce brunt

What does brunt mean?

1. nounThe main force or worst part of a blow, attack, or unpleasant situation.

Brunt in a sentence

• The coastal towns bore the brunt of the storm overnight.

• Junior staff often take the brunt of customer complaints.

Where does brunt come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

The word brunt appears in English from around the 1300s, originally meaning a sharp blow, a sudden attack, or the shock of a charge in battle. Its exact origin is genuinely uncertain, which is unusual for such an old word. Some scholars link it to the Old Norse bruna, meaning to advance like fire or to rush forward, while others suspect a connection to words for heat and burning, since a violent onset and a flare of fire share the idea of sudden force. Over the centuries the sense narrowed from the blow itself to the main shock or the heaviest part of an impact, which is how we now speak of bearing the brunt of something. Because no clear parent word survives, the spelling has simply stayed fixed as the short, blunt form we use today.

How the word is built

• brunt (single root of uncertain origin, no prefix or suffix)