BROTHER • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Brother

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/brˈəðər/ Listen

noun

Brother n. (pl. brothers or brethren)

1.

A male person who has the same father and mother with another person, or who has one of them only. In the latter case he is more definitely called a half brother, or brother of the half blood. Note: A brother having the same mother but different fathers is called a uterine brother, and one having the same father but a different mother is called an agnate brother, or in (Law) a consanguine brother. A brother having the same father and mother is called a brother-german or full brother. The same modifying terms are applied to sister or sibling. "Two of us in the churchyard lie, My sister and my brother."

2.

One related or closely united to another by some common tie or interest, as of rank, profession, membership in a society, toil, suffering, etc.; used among judges, clergymen, monks, physicians, lawyers, professors of religion, etc. "A brother of your order." "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers, For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother."

3.

One who, or that which, resembles another in distinctive qualities or traits of character. "He also that is slothful in his work is brother to him that is a great waster." "That April morn Of this the very brother." Note: In Scripture, the term brother is applied to a kinsman by blood more remote than a son of the same parents, as in the case of Abraham and Lot, Jacob and Laban. In a more general sense, brother or brethren is used for fellow-man or fellow-men. "For of whom such massacre Make they but of their brethren, men of men?"

Brother Jonathan, a humorous designation for the people of the United States collectively. The phrase is said to have originated from Washington's referring to the patriotic Jonathan Trumbull, governor of Connecticut, as "Brother Jonathan."

Blood brother. See under Blood.

verb

Brother v. t. (past & past part. brothered) To make a brother of; to call or treat as a brother; to admit to a brotherhood.

See images of 'Brother'

Etymology of 'Brother'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Brother" Quotes from Famous Books

... composure; but what of that? since, as God, he looked down from an infinite height upon the puny opposition. He agonizes in the garden; but it is imaginary suffering: how can God feel any real agony, like man? Jesus ceases to be example, ceases to be our best beloved companion and brother, and becomes a mysterious personage, inscrutable to our thought, and far ...

— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke

... drive had not been wholly impersonal. With his own family there had been the same change, the same passing, the workings of the same force in the same remorseless way, and to him, too, the same doom had come. The home to which he was driving had been his, but it was Morton Sanders's now. His brother lived there as manager of Sanders's flocks, herds, and acres, and in the house of his fathers the school-master now paid his own brother ...

— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.

... assumed her travelling-dress, but the nobles and officers of the Court were only to be permitted to salute her after she had taken leave of the King; a privilege from which, at her express request, De Vitry and his brother ...

— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... do justice to a gallant officer who on that day considered his task not complete until every ship was either captured or beyond distance of pursuit.' The inference is that the author was an officer of the Conqueror, defending his captain, Israel Pellew, younger brother of the more famous Edward, Lord Exmouth. It is possible therefore, and even probable, that this criticism of Trafalgar represents the ideas of ...

— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett

... literature whatever. But they had one interesting tradition. It had come down to them, generation after generation, that their bible had been lost, and that some day the Great Spirit would send a fair brother from the West to restore unto them the message of God which had disappeared. The "Fair Brother" came in the person of the American missionary; and his message was received in the assured faith that it was divinely sent and was the long-lost tradition of ...

— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

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