Other forms: bricks
A brick is a baked block of clay used for building walls. Lay a brick, a brick wall, built of brick.
The standard British brick is a size that fits the hand, since a bricklayer picks up thousands a day with one hand while the other holds the trowel. In slang, a phone bricked is one rendered as useful as a brick.
1nounbrickA baked block of clay used for building walls.
“The old house is built of red brick.”
brick is a block.
Middle Dutch bricke names the baked block, related to break, from the broken or cut shape.
Proto-West Germanic
*brekan — to break
Middle Dutch
bricke
Middle English
brik
English, today
brick
From Late Middle English brik, bryke, bricke, from Middle Low German - and Middle Dutch bricke "cracked or broken brick; tile-stone"; modern Dutch brik, ultimately related to Proto-West Germanic brekan (“to break”), whence also Old French briche and French brique (“brick”). Compare also German Low German Brickje (“small board, tray”). Related to break. The social media slang sense derives from memes about building up one's feed “brick by brick”, analogizing bricks with reels that inform the algorithm. The sense of a helpful, reliable person comes from Lycurgus referring to the army as the walls of Sparta, every man a brick.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA