Brad
name, noun, verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A thin, small nail, with a slight projection at the top on one side instead of a head, or occasionally with a small domed head, similar to that of an escutcheon pin.
"Into the middle arch of each desk silver-headed brads had been hammered to form a lion, a bear, a ram, a dove, and in the midst a flaming torch."
- 2 A binary radian.
- 3 a small nail wordnet
- 4 A paper fastener, a fastening device formed of thin, soft metal, such as shim brass, with a round head and a flat, split shank, which is spread after insertion in a hole in a stack of pages, in much the same way as a cotter pin or a split rivet. US
- 1 To attach using a brad. transitive
- 2 fasten with brads wordnet
- 3 To upset the end of a rod inserted in a hole so as to prevent it from being pulled out, as when riveting. transitive
- 1 A diminutive of the male given names Bradley, Bradly, or Bradford, also used as a formal given name.
"[…] Brad Schimel wants to make sure women don’t have the right to make their own health care decisions. If he wins, that right is gone,” Crawford says in the ad."
- 2 A city in Hunedoara County, Romania.
Example
More examples"Brad doesn't know as many people here as me."
Etymology
Late Middle English brad, variant of brod(d), from Old Norse broddr (“spike, shaft”), from Proto-Germanic *bruzdaz (compare Old English brord, Old High German brort), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰrusdʰos (compare Welsh brath (“sting, prick”), Albanian bredh (“fir-tree”), Lithuanian bruzdùklis (“bridle”), Czech brzda (“brake”). Doublet of prod.
Clipping.
Related phrases
More for "brad"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.