brand-new
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
9 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "brand-new", 9-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Wiktionary, and usage frequency ranked against an open word-frequency list covering the top 100,000 English words. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "brand-new" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "brand-new" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
brand new is anEnglishadj. It means: Utterly new, as new as possible. Pronounced /ˈbɹænd ˌn(j)uː/.
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Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | brand new |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adj |
| IPA | /ˈbɹænd ˌn(j)uː/ |
| Letters | 9 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for brand new is 9 letters long, classified as anadj, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈbɹænd ˌn(j)uː/. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader.Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No misspelling variants are generated for brand new in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns.It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Etymologically, the entry records: From brand (“firebrand”) + new, implying something that is newly forged (first citation 1570; compare fire-new (“fresh from the fire, brand-new”)). Alternatively, and less likely from brand as in a branding iron (i.e. newly-branded). The first element of th… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is brand new, spelled B-R-A-N-D- -N-E-W, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Utterly new, as new as possible.
- 2Acting in a way unusual for oneself.
Etymology
From brand (“firebrand”) + new, implying something that is newly forged (first citation 1570; compare fire-new (“fresh from the fire, brand-new”)). Alternatively, and less likely from brand as in a branding iron (i.e. newly-branded). The first element of the variant bran new, with the post nasal stop deletion common to English (compare the common pronunciation (outside Britain) of hunting as hunning [hʌnɪŋ]), is often back-etymologized as being from bran as if from cases where new items were supposedly “packaged up with unwanted grain (bran) in the 18th century to protect the objects during transit” (source unknown). Both variants are well attested.
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter B in our English index: