BREEDING n.
Descent; pedigree; extraction. [Obs.] Honest gentlemen, I know not your breeding. Shak. Close breeding, In and in breeding, breeding from a male and female from the same parentage. -- Cross breeding, breeding from a male and female of different lineage. -- Good breeding, politeness; genteel deportment.…
BREVIARY n.
A book containing the daily public or canonical prayers of the Roman Catholic or of the Greek Church for the seven canonical hours, namely, matins and lauds, the first, third, sixth, and ninth hours, vespers, and compline; -- distinguished from the missal.
BROMOFORM n.
A colorless liquid, CHBr3, having an agreeable odor and sweetish taste. It is produced by the simultaneous action of bromine and caustic potash upon wood spirit, alcohol, or acetone, as also by certain other reactions. In composition it is the same as chloroform, with the substitution of bromine for chlorine. It is som…
BROOM n.
esp., the Cytisus scoparius of Western Europe, which is a low shrub with long, straight, green, angular branches, mintue leaves, and large yellow flowers. No gypsy cowered o'er fires of furze and broom. Wordsworth.
BROWSE n.
nder branches or twigs of trees and shrubs, fit for the food of cattle and other animals; green food. Spenser. Sheep, goats, and oxen, and the nobler steed, On browse, and corn, and flowery meadows feed. Dryden.
BRUSSELS n.
t of the Cabbage family, which produces, in the axils of the upright stem, numerous small green heads, or "sprouts," each a cabbage in miniature, of one or two inches in diameter; the thousand-headed cabbage. -- Brussels wire ground, a ground for lace, made of silk, with meshes partly straight and partly arched.…