Chapter BRANDYPAWNEE to BRIDGEMÁN of B by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

BRANDYPAWNEE to BRIDGEMÁN

BRANDYPAWNEE, s. Brandy and water; a specimen of genuine Urdu, i.e. Camp jargon, which hardly needs interpretation. H. pani. ‘water.’ Williamson (1810) has brandy-shraub-pauny (V. M. ii. 123).

[1854.—“I’m sorry to see you gentlemen drinking brandy-pawnee,” says he; “it plays the deuce with our young men in India.”—Thackeray, Newcomes, ch. i.]

1866.—“The brandy pawnee of the East, and the ‘sangaree’ of the West Indies, are happily now almost things of the past, or exist in a very modified form.”—Waring, Tropical Resident, 177.

BRASS, s. A brace. Sea dialect. —(Roebuck.)

[BRASS-KNOCKER, s. A term applied to a réchauffé or serving up again of yesterday’s dinner or supper. It is said to be found in a novel by Winwood Reade called Liberty Hall, as a piece of Anglo-Indian slang; and it is supposed to be a corruption of basi khana, H. ‘stale food’; see 5 ser. N. & Q., 34, 77.]

BRATTY, s. A word, used only in the South, for cakes of dry cow-dung, used as fuel more or less all over India. It is Tam. varatti, [or viratti], ‘dried dung.’ Various terms are current elsewhere, but in Upper India the most common is upla.—(Vide OOPLA).

BRAVA, n.p. A sea-port on the east coast of Africa, lat. 1° 7 N., long. 44° 3, properly Barawa.

1516.—“… a town of the Moors, well walled, and built of good stone and white-wash, which is called Brava.… It is a place of trade, which has already been destroyed by the Portuguese, with great slaughter of the inhabitants.…”—Barbosa, 15.

BRAZIL-WOOD, s. This name is now applied in trade to the dye-wood imported from Pernambuco, which is derived from certain species of Caesalpinia indigenous there. But it originally applied to a dye- wood of the same genus which was imported from India, and which is now known in trade as Sappan (q.v.). [It is the andam or bakkam of the Arabs (Burton, Ar. Nights, iii. 49).] The history of the word is very curious. For when the name was applied to the newly discovered region in S. America, probably, as Barros alleges, because it produced a dye-wood similar in character to the brazil of the East, the trade-name gradually became appropriated to the S. American product, and was taken away from that of the E. Indies. See some further remarks in Marco Polo, 2nd ed., ii. 368–370 [and Encycl. Bibl. i. 120].

This is alluded to also by Camões (x. 140):

“But here where Earth spreads wider, ye shall claim
realms by the ruddy Dye-wood made renown’d;
these of the ‘Sacred Cross’ shall win the name:
by your first Navy shall that world be found.”

Burton.

The medieval forms of brazil were many; in Italian it is generally verzi, verzino, or the like.

1330.—“And here they burn the brazil-wood (verzino) for fuel …”—Fr. Odoric, in Cathay, &c., p. 77.

1552.—“… when it came to the 3d of May, and Pedralvares was about to set sail, in order to give a name to the land thus newly discovered, he ordered a very great Cross to be hoisted at the top of a tree, after mass had been said at the foot of the tree, and it had been set up with the solemn benediction of the priests, and then he gave the country the name of Sancta Cruz.… But as it was through the symbol of the Cross that the Devil lost his dominion over us … as soon as the red wood called Brazil began to arrive from that country, he wrought that that name should abide in the mouth of the people, and that the name of Holy Cross should be lost, as if the name of a wood for colouring cloth were of more moment than that wood which imbues all the sacraments with the tincture of salvation, which is the Blood of Jesus Christ.”—Barros, I. v. 2.

1554.—“The baar (Bahar) of Brazil contains 20 faraçolas (see FRAZALA, farasola, frazil, frail), weighing it in a coir rope, and there is no picotaa (see PICOTA)”—A. Nunes, 18.

1641.—“We went to see the Rasp-house where the lusty knaves are compelled to labour, and the rasping of Brazill and Log-wood is very hard labour.”—Evelyn’s Diary, August [19].

BREECH-CANDY, n.p. A locality on the shore of Bombay Island to the north of Malabar Hill. The true name, as Dr. Murray Mitchell tells me, is believed to be Burj-khadi, ‘the Tower of the Creek.’