brocard
/ˈbɹoʊkɚd/noun
brocard is a noun meaning “A legal principle usually expressed in Latin, traditionally used to concisely express a wider legal concept or rule” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled B-R-O-C-A-R-D, and it appears about once in every 91 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of brocard is brocards.
What does brocard mean?
noun
- 1
A legal principle usually expressed in Latin, traditionally used to concisely express a wider legal concept or rule.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce brocard?
- UK /ˈbɹəʊkəd/
- UK /ˈbɹəʊkɑːd/
- US /ˈbɹoʊkɚd/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-brocard-1.ogg, En-us-brocard-2.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of brocard
- brocards plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is brocard?
Brocard appears about once in every 91 million words in written English, the 305,310th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Brocard in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense A legal principle usually expressed in Latin:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | brocard |
| German | Rechtssprichwort |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does brocard come from?
From French brocard, cognate with Medieval Latin brocarda, brocardicorum opus, a collection of canonical laws written by the bishop Burchard of Worms.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).