a. Also Sc. brank-, brent-new. [f. BRAND sb. + NEW, as if fresh and glowing from the furnace; cf. Shakespeare’s fire-new. The commoner form is now bran-new.] Quite new, perfectly new.
c. 1570. Foxe, Serm. 2 Cor. v. 63. New bodies, new minds … and all thinges new, brande-newe.
1714. Gay, What d’ye call it? II. v. 28. ‘Wear these Breeches Tom; they’re quite bran-new.’
1790. Burns, Tam o’ Shanter. Nae cotillon brent new frae France.
1821. Clare, Vill. Minstr., I. 38. When villagers put on their bran-new clothes.
1824. Scott, St. Ronan’s, I. 56 (Jam.). Yeomen with the brank new blues and buckskins.
1858. Carlyle, Fredk. Gt., II. VII. iii. 183. The whole Saxon Army … all in beautiful brand-new uniforms.
1871. Morley, Voltaire (1886), 131. A bran-new vaudeville.
Hence in same sense (chiefly dial.) the double forms brand-fire-new, bran-span-new, brand-spander-new. Also Brand-newness.
1825. J. Neal, Bro. Jonathan, I. 151. Bran-fire, noo, as I’m alive.
1830. H. Angelo, Remin., I. 57. His feet were thrust into a bran-span new pair of fashionable pumps.
1855. Whitby Gloss, Brandnew, Brandspandernew, fresh from the maker’s hands, or ‘spic and span new.’
1870. Hawthorne, Eng. Note-bks. (1879), I. 108. This brand-newness makes it seem much less effective.
