Brian
name, verb ·2 syllables ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 To keep fire at the mouth of (as of an oven), to give light or to preserve heat. Northern-England, dialectal
- 1 A male given name from Irish.
""What the deuce is their fancy for calling the young beggar Brian?" he inquired."Is it Brian Boroimhe they have gone back to, or is it some of her people, or what?" "There was a good Drewitt once," answered Wilhelmina, "- - - and his name was Brian. - - - And Nannie told her, too, how a child always strains after the person it is called after, and how luck follows names, and worked her up to such a pit finally, that nothing would do her but the young gentleman must be called Brian and accordingly Brian he is - Brian Archibald. It is not an easy name to make fun out of; so all I can do is to call him Brin Baldy."
- 2 A surname.
Example
More examples"Brian repeatedly told Chris that he owed him a pretty large amount of money."
Etymology
Borrowed from Irish Brian. Doublet of Brendan.
From dialectal English, probably variant of brine (“to burn”), from brine (“a burning”), from Middle English brüne (“a burn, a burning”), from Old English bryne (“a burning, conflagration, fire, flame, heat, inflammation, burn, scald, torch, fervor, passion”), from Proto-Germanic *bruniz (“fire, burning”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰrenu- (“burn, fire”). Cognate with Scots brin (“a flash”), Scots brin, bryne (“to be on fire, be inflamed, burn”), Old Norse bruni (“fire, burning”). More at burn.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.