once good, great, handsome, accomplished, and everything that's desirable—money, money, is your universal good,—only get into Tip Street, Jerry.
Brag, subs. (thieves').—A usurer; a Jew. Cf., Sixty-per-cent.
Braggadocia, subs. (thieves').—This is explained in Dickens' Reprinted Pieces (in a footnote) to mean three months' imprisonment as reputed thieves. It is difficult to trace the connection between this and the ordinary meaning of braggadocio.
1857. Dickens, Reprinted Pieces (Three 'Detective' Anecdotes, The Artful Touch), p. 253. 'We don't take much by this move, anyway, for nothing's found upon 'em, and it's only the braggadocia after all.'
Brain Pan, subs. (sporting).—1. The skull, or skull-cap. Also called brain-canister. Hotten quotes the term as of pugilistic origin, but it ante-dates the palmy days of the 'Fancy' by many years. Brain pan in this sense can, perhaps, hardly be classed as slang; not so, however, sense 2. The Scotch equivalent is harn-pan.—See quotations under sense 2.
2. (common.)—The head itself. For general synonyms, see Chump.
b. 1529. Skelton, Elynoor Rommin, in Hart. Misc. (ed. Park), I., 417. Upon her brain pan Like an Egyptian Capped about.
1608. Dekker, Belman of London, in wks. (Grosart) III., 91. The spirit of her owne malt walkt in her brayne pan.
1609. Dekker, Gul's Hornbook, Prœmium. Tarleton, Kemp, nor Singer . . . never played the clownes more naturally then the arrantest Sot of you all shall if hee will but boyle my Instructions in his braine-pan.
1622. Massinger, Virgin-Martyr, ii., 2. Oh, sir, his brain-pan is a bed of snakes, Whose sting shoots through his eyeballs.
1817. Scott, Rob Roy, ch. xxxiii. 'Weize a brace of balls through his HARN-PAN!'
1822. Scott, Fortunes of Nigel, ch. xi. 'Were I your master, sirrah, . . . I would make your brain-pan, as you call it, boil over, were you to speak a word in my presence before you were spoken to.'
Bramble, subs. (provincial slang).—In Kent a lawyer is so called; obviously a sarcastic allusion to the 'tangles' of the law.
Bramble-Gelder (provincial slang).—A derisive appellation for an agriculturist; a Suffolk term.
Bran, subs. (common).—A loaf. [In all likelihood this is a mere abbreviation of bran-loaf.] For synonyms, see Tommy.
1837. Dickens, Oliver Twist, ch. viii. He purchased a sufficiency of ready-dressed ham and a half-quartern loaf, or, as he himself expressed it, 'a fourpenny bran!' Ibid, p. 306. Two half-quartern brans, pound of best fresh.
Branded Ticket, subs. (nautical).—Admiral Smyth [1867] quotes this as 'a discharge given to an infamous man, on which his character is given, and the reason he is turned out of the service.'
Brandy Face, subs. (old).—A tippler; a drunkard, especially one whose favourite drink is brandy.
a. 1687. Cotton, Æneid, II. Burl. (1692), 85. You goodman brandy-face, unfist her. [m.]
