brao

• bráu, broo

From Proto-Celtic *brawū (“millstone”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʷréh₂wō (“heavy stone”), from *gʷréh₂us (“heavy”).

• IPA^(key): /braːu̯/

brao f (genitive broon)

1. quern, millstone
   • c. 845, St Gall Glosses on Priscian, published in Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus (reprinted 1975, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies), edited and with translations by Whitley Stokes and John Strachan, vol. II, pp. 49–224, Sg. 184^b3

     Tuarcain do·fuaircitis inna grán la arsidi resiu arista brao.

     The grains used to be crushed by pounding by the ancients before a quern was invented.

   • c. 850, Book of Armagh, folio 10^a2, published in Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus, vol. 2, p. 45:

     broon glosses Latin molae

Not attested in the plural until Middle Irish

• Middle Irish: bró
  • Irish: bró
  • Scottish Gaelic: brà

• Gregory Toner, Sharon Arbuthnot, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, Marie-Luise Theuerkauf, Dagmar Wodtko, editors (2019), “1 bró”, in eDIL: Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language