brooch

UK/bɹəʊtʃ/US/bɹoʊt͡ʃ/

nounB2+Common in everyday speech and writing · #7,301 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: brooches

A brooch is a piece of jewellery with a pin on the back that you fasten to a coat, a lapel or a dress. A silver bird on a grandmother's collar, an enamel poppy in November, a heavy cameo pinned above the heart.

Say it like broach, rhyming with coach — the double O is a trap and nobody says brooooch. It is not a badge: a badge shows you belong to something, a brooch is worn for the look of it. The verb that goes with it is pin — she pinned the brooch to her scarf. Old brooches carry family weight, which is why the word turns up in wills and antique-shop cabinets more than in shops selling new clothes.

Definitions of brooch

1nounbroochA piece of jewellery fastened to clothing by a pin at the back.B2+
“She wore her mother's brooch on the lapel of her coat.”
synonyms: pin

brooch is a piece of jewellery.

Where it comes from

Brooch is another spelling of broach, the word for a pointed tool or spike. The two split on the page and never in the mouth, which is why a brooch is still said like a broach. The point is the whole idea: a brooch is jewellery with a pin driven through the cloth.

Variant of broach.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Clothes & Fashion, A Man Called Ove, Jewellery & Watches

First appears in chapter 8 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

brooch in the wild

The earliest known brooches are from the Bronze Age.
Brooch
In archaeology, ancient European brooches are usually referred to by the Latin term fibula.
Brooch
The Tara Brooch is an Irish Celtic brooch, dated to the late 7th or early 8th century.
Tara Brooch
For this reason, many art historians describe it with inverted commas as the "Tara" brooch.
Tara Brooch
A fibula is a brooch or pin for fastening garments, typically at the right shoulder.
Fibula (brooch)

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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