Also 4–9 braken, 5 brakan, bracon, (7 braking), 8 brachen (Sc.), 8–9 breckan (Sc.), breckon (north. dial.). [ME. (northern) braken, app. representing an ON. *brakni, whence Sw. bräken, Da. bregne ‘fern’ (? and, by corruption, Icel. burkni ‘common fern.’)
The alleged OE. bracce wk. fem. is merely a guess of Cockayne’s (Leechd. III. 315) from the place-name Braccanheal Bracknell (which may possibly be from a personal name Bracca). It could not, in any case, be the predecessor of ME. braken. Cf. BRAKE sb.1, BRACK sb.4]
1. A fern; spec. (in modern writers) Pteris aquilina, the ‘Brake.’ (In the north all large ferns are brackens; Pteris aquilina is merely the most conspicuous and best known, from the masses in which it grows.) Southern writers often make bracken collective. Also attrib.
c. 1325. E. E. Allit. P., B. 1675. Þou … most … byte on þe bent of braken & erbes.
1483. Cath. Angl., 40. A Brakan, filix.
1523. Fitzherb., Surv., 6 b. Yet may he lawfully … selle all the wode, brome, gorse, fyrs, braken, ferne, busshes.
1548. Turner, Names of Herbes (1881), 38. The commune Ferne or brake, which the northerne men cal a bracon.
1563. Richmond Wills & Inv. (1853), 169. Burning brakens.
1649. Blithe, Eng. Improv. Impr. (1653), 124. Goss, Broom, Braking, &c.
1775. Lightfoot, Flora Scot. (1789), 653. Flowering Fern or Osmund Royal: Royal Brachens Scotis.
1787. Burns, Halloween, xxvi. Amang the brachens, on the brae.
1810. Tannahill, Gloomy Winter’s now awa’. Feathery breckans fringe the rocks.
1813. Hogg, Queen’s Wake, 2. I found thee in the braken glen.
1878. Black, Green Past., ii. 13. Withered brackens coming up in solitary stalks of green.
2. Comb., as † bracken-bush, a large plant or clump of fern or bracken; bracken-clock, the Rose-beetle (Phyllopertha horticola).
1483. Cath. Angl., 40. Brakanbuske, filicarium, felicetum.
1884. G. Braithwaite, Salmon. Westmrld., vi. 27. The bracken-clock, or rose-beetle.
Hence Brackened a., overgrown with bracken.
1884. W. C. Smith, Kildrostan, I. i. 32. Brackened braes and craggy hills.
