brave
/breɪv
/- Cheshire junior girls put up a brave fight before losing by a point to Yorkshire at Low Laithes in an inter-county fixture.
- For all their faults, Ireland put up a brave fight against the professional Australian side and are not without hope of redeeming themselves in Melbourne in a week.
- George had put up a brave fight over the sixteen months of his illness, with frequent trips to hospital, but was always positive and hopeful.
Synonyms
- A fine, brave world awaits the new parliament.
- It was a sad way to end a week that has forced her name to the forefront of British women's tennis and allowed her to generate an enthusiasm for the sport with a colourful personality and a brave style of play.
- As alien as the imported trees, they make the only spark of brave colour in the landscape, diverting the eye from the soft ruin of mulched leaves along the kerbs.
- When the Cavalry invested Indian encampments, they periodically encountered warrior braves beside women and children.
- The two brave warriors are about to be absorbed.
- The last few weeks have been relatively quiet in the West, with few anglers braving the cold conditions.
- Since she was a child, Elliott has loved the outdoors, so she's used to braving unsavoury weather conditions.
- But like his hardened ancestors from Achill island he braved the weather and endured.
Synonyms
Phrases
brave the elements
brave new world
put a brave face on something
Derivatives
braveness
- For them, it symbolizes machismo - braveness, courage and the feel of ‘being a man'.
- A richly layered anti-realist film, it showed a real courage and braveness to explore and experiment formally.
- I told him he was the bravest man I'd ever known, leaving out how his braveness usually crossed the line into pigheaded stupidity (one should cut someone a little slack when he's on his deathbed).
Origin
Late 15th century: from French, from Italian bravo 'bold' or Spanish bravo 'courageous, untamed, savage', based on Latin barbarus (see barbarous).
In Old English people with all the attributes of bravery were ‘bold’. In the Middle Ages they could also be ‘courageous’, but it was not until the late 15th century that they became brave. The word came through French from Italian or Spanish bravo and goes back to Latin barbarus, the source of barbarian. Scots braw (late 16th century) ‘fine’, bravado (mid 16th century), bravo (mid 18th century), and bravura (mid 18th century) all go back to the same source. The phrase brave new world refers to a new or hopeful period of history brought about by major changes in society—usually implying that the changes are in fact undesirable. It is taken from the title of a satirical novel by Aldous Huxley (1894–1963), published in 1932. Huxley himself borrowed the phrase from a line in Shakespeare's The Tempest. Miranda has grown up isolated on an island with her magician father Prospero, the monster Caliban, and some spirits. On first encountering some other humans she exclaims: ‘How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world / That has such people in it!’