Other forms: bras
A bra is a garment supporting a woman's chest. A new bra, bra size, sports bra.
Fitting is the whole problem: surveys repeatedly find that most women are wearing the wrong size, because the band does the supporting and it is usually too loose. Sizing is not standardised between makers. The word is short for brassiere, which came from a French word for an arm-guard.
1nounbraA garment supporting a woman's chest.
“She needed a sports bra with more support for running.”
bra is a garment.
A clipping of brassiere, from French brassiere, from a word meaning arm. The French for the garment is not brassiere.
Proto-Indo-European
*mreǵʰ-
Old French
braciere
French
brassière
English, today
bra
a clipping of brassiere, borrowed from French brassière, from Old French braciere (originally a lining inside armor to protect the arm, but later a garment), from Old French brace (“arm”), from Latin bracchia, plural of Latin bracchium (“forearm”), from Ancient Greek βραχίων (“forearm”), from Proto-Hellenic brəkʰús (“short”) (because the forearm is shorter than the upper arm), inherited from Proto-Indo-European mréǵʰus.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA