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say it: brays
brace is a noun and verb meaning "a support that steadies or strengthens something else". It carries 13 recorded senses.
a support that steadies or strengthens something else
“he wore a brace on his knee”
two items of the same kind
a set of two similar things considered as a unit
either of two punctuation marks ({ or }) used to enclose textual material
a rope on a square-rigged ship that is used to swing a yard about and secure it
elastic straps that hold trousers up (usually used in the plural)
plural
an appliance that corrects dental irregularities
a carpenter's tool having a crank handle for turning and a socket to hold a bit for boring
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for brace come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.