Other forms: brought, bringing, brings
When you bring something, you carry it with you to where you are going, or to the person you are speaking to. 'Bring your passport,' says the message the night before the flight.
Bring and take split the world by direction: things come toward the speaker with bring and move away with take — bring it here, take it there. The past forms are irregular, so 'bringed' is never right. Bring also means to cause: rain brings traffic, winter brings dark afternoons, a letter brings bad news. The phrasal verbs do half the work in English — bring up a child or a subject, bring back a memory, bring about a change, bring in money, bring down a government. And 'bring yourself to do something' means pushing past your own reluctance.
1verbbringTo carry or lead someone or something to the place where you are going.~29%
“Bring the folding chairs and we'll sit in the garden.”
2verbcauseTo cause something to happen or to exist.~63%
“A day of rain brings the river up over the path.”
3verbstartTo start a legal action against someone.~6%
“The family plan to bring a case against the hospital.”
4verbyourselfTo make yourself do something you find hard (bring yourself to).~2%
“She could not bring herself to open the letter.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 17 sentences found in the wild and placed 17 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Bring is one of the oldest words in the language, and it has barely changed shape. Old English bringan rests on Proto-West Germanic bringan and Proto-Germanic bringaną, 'to bring', from a Proto-Indo-European bʰrenk-. The cousins are still recognisable: Dutch brengen, German bringen, Afrikaans bring, and Welsh hebrwng, 'to bring, lead'.
Proto-Indo-European
*bʰrenk-
Proto-Germanic
*bringaną — to bring
Proto-West Germanic
*bringan
Old English
bringan
Middle English
bryngen
English, today
bring
From Middle English bryngen, from Old English bringan, from Proto-West Germanic bringan, from Proto-Germanic bringaną (“to bring”), from Proto-Indo-European bʰrenk-, possibly based on bʰer-. Compare Scots bring, West Frisian bringe, Low German brengen, Dutch brengen, Afrikaans bring, German bringen; also Welsh hebrwng (“to bring, lead”), txb pränk- (“to take away; restrain oneself, hold back”), Latvian brankti (“lying close”), Lithuanian branktas (“whiffletree”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA