bracket

• IPA^(key): /ˈbɹækɪt/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ækɪt

From earlier bragget, probably from Middle French braguette, from Old French braguette (“the opening in the fore part of a pair of breeches”), from Old Occitan braga, from Latin brāca (“pants”), from Transalpine Gaulish *brāca (“pants”), perhaps from or related to similar forms in Germanic: compare Old English braccas (“pants”), Old English brōc (“breeches”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰrāg-, from *bʰreg- (“to break, crack, split, divide”). More at breech, britches.

bracket (plural brackets)

A decorative architectural bracket (sense 2)

Dental braces showing the brackets (sense 2) glued to teeth and supporting the arch wire.

1. A fixture attached to a wall to hold up a shelf.
2. (engineering) Any intermediate object that connects a smaller part to a larger part, the smaller part typically projecting sideways from the larger part.
   • 2005, Todd Downs, The Bicycling Guide to Complete Bicycle Maintenance & Repair for Road and Mountain bikes, →ISBN:

     To determine if your frame has this bottom bracket type, look for a notched and possibly knurled lockring on the left side (the side without the chainrings).

   • 2013, Laura Mitchell, An Introduction to Orthodontics, →ISBN, page 220:

     Not only does the attachment on the tooth surface (called a bracket) allow the tooth to be moved vertically or tilted, but also a force couple can be generated by the interaction between the bracket and an archwire running through the bracket.

3. (nautical) A short crooked timber, resembling a knee, used as a support.
4. (military) The cheek or side of an ordnance carriage, supporting the trunnions.
5. Any of the characters "(", ")", "[", "]", "{", "}", and (computer science) "<" and ">", used in pairs to enclose parenthetic remarks, sections of mathematical expressions, etc.
   1. (Britain) "(" and ")" specifically, the other forms above requiring adjectives for disambiguation.
   2. (US) "[" and "]" specifically - as opposed to the other forms, which have their own technical names.
6. (sports) A printed diagram of games in a tournament.
7. (sports) A prediction of the outcome of games in a tournament, used for betting purposes.
8. One of several ranges of numbers.

   tax bracket, age bracket

9. (algebra) A pair of values that represent the smallest and largest elements of a range.
10. (military) In artillery, the endangered region between two shell impacts (one long and one short). The next shell fired is likely to hit accurately.
11. (typography) The small curved or angular corner formed by a serif and a stroke in a letter.
12. (land surveying, 19th century) a mark cut into a stone by land surveyors to secure a bench.

• ("(" and ")"): parentheses, parens
• (land surveying): benchmark

• See also Thesaurus:bracket

Punctuation

bracket (third-person singular simple present brackets, present participle bracketing, simple past and past participle bracketed)

1. To support by means of mechanical brackets.
2. To enclose in typographical brackets.
3. To bound on both sides, to surround, as enclosing with brackets.

   I tried to hit the bullseye by first bracketing it with two shots and then splitting the difference with my third, but I missed.

4. To place in the same category.

   Because the didn't have enough young boys for two full teams, they bracketed the seven-year olds with the eight-year olds.

5. To mark distinctly for special treatment.
   • 1992, Tom Burns, Erving Goffman, page 292:

     Next, since so much social activity is defined by being bracketed out of the world of ongoing events, it becomes possible that outside such bracketed episodes, […] people are — especially beforehand, but also afterwards — to some extent "out of role", and so off their guard.

6. To set aside, discount, ignore.
   • 2009, Michael Erard, “Holy Grammar, Inc.”, in Search Magazine, July–August 2009:

     SIL got access to academic legitimacy; linguists bracketed the evangelical engine that drives SIL because they got access to data and tools.

7. (photography) To take multiple images of the same subject, using a range of exposure settings, in order to help ensure that a satisfactory image is obtained.
8. (philosophy, phenomenology) In the philosophical system of Edmund Husserl and his followers, to set aside metaphysical theories and existential questions concerning what is real in order to focus philosophical attention simply on the actual content of experience.

bracket (uncountable)

1. Alternative form of bragget (drink made with ale and honey)

• betrack

bracket m (plural brackets)

1. bracket (braces)