English

Noun

bracket ‎(plural brackets)

A decorative architectural bracket (sense 2)

Dental braces showing the brackets (sense 2) glued to teeth and supporting the arch wire.

1. A fixture attached to a wall to hold up a shelf.
2. (engineering) Any intermediate object that connects a smaller part to a larger part, the smaller part typically projecting sideways from the larger part.
   • 2005, Todd Downs, The Bicycling Guide to Complete Bicycle Maintenance & Repair for Road and Mountain bikes, ISBN 1594863423:

     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).

   • 2013, Laura Mitchell, An Introduction to Orthodontics, ISBN 0199594716, page 220:

     Not only does the attachment on the tooth surface (called a bracket) allow the tooth to be moved vertically or tilted, but also a force couple can be generated by the interaction between the bracket and an archwire running through the bracket.

3. (nautical) A short crooked timber, resembling a knee, used as a support.
4. (military) The cheek or side of an ordnance carriage.
5. Any of the characters "(", ")", "[", "]", "{", "}", and, in the area of computer languages, "<" and ">"; used in pairs to enclose parenthetic remarks, sections of mathematical expressions, etc.
   1. "(" and ")" specifically, the other forms above requiring adjectives for disambiguation.
   2. (technical) "[" and "]" specifically - opposed to the other forms of which have their own technical names.
6. (sports) A printed diagram of games in a tournament.
7. (sports) A prediction of the outcome of games in a tournament, used for betting purposes.
8. One of several ranges of numbers.

   tax bracket, age bracket

9. (algebra) A pair of values that represent the smallest and largest elements of a range.
10. (military) In artillery, the endangered region between two shell impacts (one long and one short). The next shell fired is likely to hit accurately.

Synonyms

• ("(" and ")"): parentheses, parens

Derived terms

Translations

Hyponyms

• See also Wikisaurus:bracket

See also

Punctuation

Verb

bracket ‎(third-person singular simple present brackets, present participle bracketing, simple past and past participle bracketed)

1. To bound on both sides, to surround, as enclosing with brackets.

   I tried to hit the bullseye by first bracketing it with two shots and then splitting the difference with my third, but I missed.

2. To place in the same category.

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

3. To mark distinctly for special treatment.
   • 1992, Tom Burns, Erving Goffman, page 292:

     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.

4. To set aside, discount, ignore.
   • 2009, Michael Erard, “Holy Grammar, Inc.”, in Search Magazine, July–August 2009:

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

5. (photography) To take multiple images of the same subject, using a range of exposure settings, in order to help ensure that a satisfactory image is obtained.
6. (philosophy, phenomenology) In the philosophical system of Edmund Husserl and his followers, to set aside metaphysical theories and existential questions concerning what is real in order to focus philosophical attention simply on the actual content of experience.

Translations

Etymology 2

Noun

bracket ‎(uncountable)

1. Alternative form of bragget (drink made with ale and honey)

Spanish

Noun

bracket m ‎(plural brackets)

1. bracket (braces)