bracket

Meanings

1. 1
   verb

   to classify or group

   They bracketed the teams for the playoffs.

2. 2
   verb

   to support with brackets

   I bracket bookshelves so they can bear the weight of my heavy tomes.

3. 3
   noun

   Any intermediate object that connects a smaller part to a larger part, the smaller part typically projecting sideways from the larger part.

   To determine if your frame has this bottom bracket type, look for a notched and possibly knurled lockring on the left side (the side without the chainrings).

4. 4
   noun

   One of several ranges of numbers.

   tax bracket, age bracket

5. 5
   verb

   To place in the same category.

   Because they didn’t have enough young boys for two full teams, they bracketed the seven-year-olds with the eight-year-olds.

6. 6
   verb

   To mark distinctly for special treatment.

   Next, since so much social activity is defined by being bracketed out of the world of ongoing events, it becomes possible that outside such bracketed episodes, […] people are — especially beforehand, but also afterwards — to some extent "out of role", and so off their guard.

7. 7
   verb

   To set aside, discount, ignore.

   SIL got access to academic legitimacy; linguists bracketed the evangelical engine that drives SIL because they got access to data and tools.

8. 8
   noun

   a support projecting from a wall (as to hold a shelf)

Etymology

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 Transalpine Gaulish *brāca, from Proto-Germanic *brāks, an early form of Proto-Germanic *brōks (“leggings, breeches, trousers”).