Other forms: brackets
A bracket is an L-shaped support screwed to a wall to carry a shelf. Fix the bracket, a shelf bracket, four brackets.
The load goes into the wall rather than into the shelf, which is why the fixing matters more than the bracket. In punctuation, brackets are the paired marks — round ones are parentheses and square ones are brackets in careful use. A tax bracket is a band of income. Note bracket as a verb, meaning to group together.
1nounbracketAn L-shaped support fixed to a wall.
“He screwed two metal brackets to the wall and rested the shelf on top.”
2nounbandA band or a paired punctuation mark.
“Most of the audience were in the 18 to 25 age bracket.”
bracket is a support or a mark.
Old French braguette named a codpiece, from brague, breeches. The architectural corbel was named for the resemblance, and the punctuation and the shelf support followed.
Old French
braguette — the opening in the fore part of a pair of breeches, one's fly
Middle English
*braget
English, today
bracket
From earlier bragget, bracket, from Middle English braget, braket (attested in braket nail), from Old French braguette (“the opening in the fore part of a pair of breeches, one's fly”), a diminutive of Old French brague (“knickers, britches”), from Old Occitan braga, from Latin brāca (“pants”), from xtg brāca, from Proto-Germanic brāks, an early form of Proto-Germanic brōks (“leggings, breeches, trousers”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA