brank means A metal bridle formerly used as a torture device to hold the head of a scold and restrain the tongue. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 89 out of 100.
brank is pronounced /ˈbɹæŋk/.
Why “brank” is a great word
BRANK — [Noun, Verb] A metal bridle historically used as a punitive instrument to publicly silence and humiliate a person, typically a woman, accused of being a scold; to brank is to subject someone to this device. Of uncertain origin; first recorded in the late 1500s. Possibly related to Scottish Gaelic brangus, brangas ("a sort of pillory") or Dutch pranger ("fetter"). Unlike a gag, which is a general tool for obstructing speech, or a bridle, which is a utilitarian guide for a horse, a brank is a civic apparatus for the symbolic mastery of a human voice. It is the iron cage fitted over the head, the spiked plate pressing into the palate, and the chain leash by which the silenced prisoner was paraded. It is the formal, chilling answer of a civilization to a voice it deemed intolerable.
noun
- A metal bridle formerly used as a torture device to hold the head of a scold and restrain the tongue.
- A sort of bridle with wooden side pieces.“Your armour gude ye mauna shaw, / Nor yet appear like men o' weir; / As country lads be a' array'd, / Wi' branks and brecham on each mare.”
- Buckwheat.“One - third of brank-ground , or mixed with any other kind of grain or roots, is as large a proportion as can be given with safety”
verb
- To put someone in the branks.
- To hold up and toss the head; applied to horses as spurning the bit.
- To prance; to caper.“Donald came branking down the brae
Wi' twenty thousand men.”