brick
/ˈbɹɪk/ noun, verb, adjective, proper noun
Forms bricks bricking bricked
- noun (countable) A hardened rectangular block of mud, clay etc., used for building. “This wall is made of bricks.”
- noun (uncountable) Such hardened mud, clay, etc. considered collectively, as a building material. “This house is made of brick.”
- noun (countable) Something shaped like a brick. “a plastic explosive brick”
- noun The colour brick red.
- noun (slang, dated) A helpful and reliable person. “Thanks for helping me wash the car. You’re a brick.”
- noun (basketball, slang) A shot which misses, particularly one which bounces directly out of the basket because of a too-flat trajectory, as if the ball were a heavier object. “We can't win if we keep throwing up bricks from three-point land.”
- noun (informal) A power brick; an external power supply consisting of a small box with an integral male plug and an attached cord terminating in another plug.
- noun (computing slang, figurative) An electronic device, especially a heavy box-shaped one, that has become non-functional or obsolete.
- verb (transitive) To build, line, or form with bricks. “to be bricked alive (as a form of capital punishment)”
- verb (transitive) To make into bricks.
- verb (transitive, slang) To hit someone or something with a brick.
- verb (transitive, computing slang) To make (an electronic device) non-functional and usually beyond repair, as a result of software or configuration issues. “My VCR was bricked during the lightning storm.”
- verb (intransitive, computing slang) Of an electronic device, to become non-functional, especially in a way beyond repair, as a result of software or configuration issues. “My phone bricked halfway through the videoconference.”
- verb (intransitive, slang) To blunder; to screw up.
- adjective (colloquial, African-American Vernacular, New York, of weather) Extremely cold.
- proper noun A surname.
- proper noun A township in Ocean County, New Jersey, United States, named after Joseph Brick.
Synonyms
algid Arctic Baltic boreal brass monkeys brumal chill chilled chilly clay-cold cold cold as a mackerel cold as charity freezing frosty frore frozen gelid glacial hiemal
Antonyms
Etymology
From Late Middle English brik, bryke, bricke, from Middle Low German and Middle Dutch bricke ("cracked or broken brick; tile-stone"; modern Dutch brik), ultimately related to Proto-West Germanic *brekan (“to break”), whence also Old French briche and French brique (“brick”). Compare also German Low German Brickje (“small board, tray”). Related to break.
The social media slang sense derives from memes about building up one's feed “brick by brick”, analogizing bricks with reels that inform the algorithm.
The sense of a helpful, reliable person comes from Lycurgus referring to the army as the walls of Sparta, every man a brick.
* As an English surname, from the noun bridge. This aligns more closely with the pronunciation of its ancestors, Middle English brigge, Old English brycg.
* As a Polish surname, from Brych, which has the same pronunciation.
Webster’s 1913
- noun A block or clay tempered with water, sand, etc., molded into a regular form, usually rectangular, and sun-dried, or burnt in a kiln, or in a heap or stack called a clamp.
- noun Bricks, collectively, as designating that kind of material; as, a load of brick; a thousand of brick.
- verb To lay or pave with bricks; to surround, line, or construct with bricks.
- verb To imitate or counterfeit a brick wall on, as by smearing plaster with red ocher, making the joints with an edge tool, and pointing them. To brick up, to fill up, inclose, or line, with brick.
Etymology [OE. brik, F. brique; of Ger. origin; cf. AS. brice a breaking, fragment, Prov. E. brique piece, brique de pain, equiv. to AS. hlafes brice, fr. the root of E. break. See Break.]
Sources: Wiktionary · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “brick”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details