brine

From Middle English brine, bryne, from Old English brīne, brȳne, from Proto-Germanic *brīnijaz, *brīnaz (compare Scots brime, West Frisian brein, Dutch brijn (“brine”), West Flemish brijne), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰreyH- (“to cut, maim”) (compare Old Irish ro·bria (“may hurt, damage”), Latin friāre (“to rub, crumble”), Slovene bríti (“to shave, shear”), Albanian brej (“to gnaw”), Sanskrit बृणाति (bhrīṇā́ti, “they injure, hurt”)).

Alternatively, from Proto-Indo-European *mrīnós, from *móri (compare Latin marīnus).

• enPR: brīn, IPA^(key): /bɹaɪn/

• Audio (US)

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• Rhymes: -aɪn

brine (usually uncountable, plural brines)

1. Salt water; water saturated or strongly impregnated with salt; a salt-and-water solution for pickling.

   Do you want a can of tuna in oil or in brine?

   • 1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, chapter 8, in Mr. Pratt's Patients:

     Philander went into the next room […] and came back with a salt mackerel that dripped brine like a rainstorm. Then he put the coffee pot on the stove and rummaged out a loaf of dry bread and some hardtack.

2. The sea or ocean; the water of the sea.
   • c. 1610-11, William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act I scene ii:

     Ariel: Not a soul / But felt a fever of the mad, and play'd / Some tricks of desperation. All but mariners / Plung'd in the foaming brine and quit the vessels, / Then all afire with me: the king's son Ferdinand, / With hair up-staring— then like reeds, not hair— / Was the first man that leapt, cried 'Hell is empty, / And all devils are here.'

brine (third-person singular simple present brines, present participle brining, simple past and past participle brined)

1. (transitive) To preserve food in a salt solution.

• debrine
• desalinate

• debrine
• embrine
• briner

• bittern

• Brien, biner, rebin

brine f

1. plural of brina

• nerbi