Forms: 5 breke, (pl.) brikkes, 5–6 bryke, 6 brike, brikke, bryk, bryck(e, 6–7 bricke, 6– brick. [Found only since the middle of the 15th c.; not in the Promptorium 1440, or Catholicon 1483: prob. a. F. brique, in OF. also briche; quoted by Godefroy 1264 (briche) and 1457 (brique) in sense of ‘a form of loaf,’ and also in OF. in sense of ‘broken piece, fragment, bit,’ and reinforcing a negative in sense ‘not a bit.’ Still in Burgundian and Hainault dial., in sense ‘piece,’ brique de pain ‘piece of bread,’ in Swiss Romance “piece, bit, débris,’ mod.Pr. briga ‘débris.’ It would appear therefore that the OF. word was derived in some way from the Teutonic verb brek-an to break (cf. F. brèche, ONF. breke, breque breaking, BREACH), and that its original sense was ‘broken piece,’ which passed through the general sense ‘piece, bit,’ or the specific sense ‘piece of bread as baked, loaf,’ to that of ‘piece of baked clay.’ In French une brique, the shaped object, would thus be earlier than la brique, the substance; but in English the earliest examples yet found are of the substance.]
1. A substance formed of clay, kneaded, molded, and hardened by baking with fire, or in warm countries and ancient times by drying in the sun; used instead of stone as a building material.
c. 1440. [see 8].
1465. Mann. & Househ. Exp., 301. I did rekene wethe heme that makethe my breke.
1467. Ord. Worcester, in Eng. Gilds (1870), 372. That no chimneys of tre … be suffred … but that the owners make hem of bryke or stone.
1535. Coverdale, Gen. xi. 3. Come on, let vs make bryck & burne it. And they toke bryck for stone.
c. 1543. W. Cleve, in Dom. Archit., III. 79. With closer of brike toured aboute your gardein.
1603. Shaks., Meas. for M., IV. i. 28. Garden circummur’d with Bricke.
1776. Gibbon, Decl. & F., I. 44. Augustus was accustomed to boast that he had found his capital of brick, and that he had left it of marble.
1788. H. Walpole, in Walpoliana, xiv. 8. The ruin in Kew Gardens is built with act-of-parliament brick.
1846. M’Culloch, Acc. Brit. Empire (1854), I. 623. By far the greater number of houses in London … are built of brick.
2. A block of this substance made of a definite size and shape, as an individual object; ordinarily rectangular, but also of other shapes for special purposes. (In 16th c. the pl. was often brick.)
The dimensions of an ordinary brick are, in London, 9 in. × 43/8 × 25/8; but the thickness varies from 31/8 (as in Birmingham) to 13/4 in.
c. 1525. Surv. Yorksh. Monast., in Yorkshire Archæol. Jrnl. (1886), IX. 329. A litle house … coueryd wt tyle, wt a chymney of brikkes.
1535. Coverdale, Ex. v. 8. The nombre of the brycke which they made.
1611. Bible, Gen. xi. 3. Goe to, let vs make bricke, and burne them thorowly. Ibid., Ex. vi. 18. Yet shall ye deliuer the tale of brickes.
1651. Proc. Parl., No. 123. 1902. Our Landlords … have exacted the full taile of the Bricks, when the ground produced no straw.
1677. Yarranton, Engl. Improv., 136. Six hundred thousand of Bricks builds a Granary, Two Brick and half thick.
1724. Ord. Tilers’ & Brickl. Comp., in Lond. Gaz., No. 6251/3. Every Brick is to be 9 Inches in Length, 4 Inches and a Quarter of an Inch in Breadth, and 2 Inches and a Quarter of an Inch in Thickness.
1823. P. Nicholson, Pract. Build., 345. Called Fire-Bricks, because of their enduring the fire.
1840. Marryat, Olla Podr. (Rtldg.), 256. We cannot put on a heavy roof with a brick-and-a-half wall.
1850. Layard, Nineveh, xiii. 342. Squares which when dried by the heat of the sun served them for bricks.
3. A loaf shaped like a brick. Often applied to a ‘tin-loaf,’ but the local uses vary. [Cf. the OFr. and Fr. dial. uses referred to above.]
1735. Byrom, Rem. (1855), I. II. 615. Breakfasted upon a penny brick and tea with sugar, and ate all the brick very near.
1822. Kitchiner, Cook’s Oracle, App. 508. Put a quartern of Flour into a large Basin … knead it again, and it is ready either for Loaves or Bricks.
1857. Eliza Acton, Eng. Bread-bk., II. iv. 184. The loaves technically called ‘bricks,’ which are baked in tins.
1847–78. Halliwell, Brick, a kind of loaf. var. dial.
1875. Ure, Dict. Arts, I. 477. The loaves known under the names of bricks, Coburg, cottage, and French rolls, being all made of the same dough.
4. transf. A brick-shaped block of any substance, e.g., of tea (see brick-tea in 10); also in other more consciously figurative uses. Box of bricks: a box of wooden blocks for a child to build with.
1827. H. E. Lloyd, trans. Timkowski’s Trav., II. 315. A good horse was in our presence sold for about sixty bricks of tea.
1871. Tyndall, Fragm. Sc. (ed. 6), I. xii. 358. in building up crystals these little atomic bricks often arrange themselves into layers.
1875. Ure, Dict. Arts, II. 507. Patent fuel … small coal and pitch, moulded together into bricks by pressure.
1884. Gilmour, Mongols, 143. Buyers … conspicuous from the clumsy bricks of tea which they carried.
1885. R. L. & F. Stevenson, Dynamiter, 191. ‘You see this brick?’… lifting a cake of the infernal compound [dynamite] from the laboratory-table.
5. Phrase Like bricks, like a brick: with a vengeance, vigorously, with good will: occasionally with a clear reference to the crash with which a quantity of bricks fall, but usually only as an expression of eulogy, as in next sense.
1836. Dickens, Sk. by Boz, Lost Cab-driver. Out flies the fare like bricks.
1853. E. Forbes, Lett., in Geikie, Life, xiv. 509. Gibbs has worked like a brick.
1856. Kingsley, Lett., May. You fellows worked like bricks.
1856. F. E. Paget, Owlet of Owlst., 139. She sits her horse as if she was part of him … hunts like … a brick.
6. fig. (slang or colloq.) A good fellow, one whom one approves for his genuine good qualities.
1840. Barham, Ingol. Leg., Bros. Birchington, xiii. I don’t stick to declare Father Dick … was a Regular Brick.
1857. Hughes, Tom Brown, vii. (1871), 151–2. What a brick, not to give us even twenty lines to learn!
1864. Miss Yonge, C’tess Kate, xii. (ed. 2), 213. ‘She’s run away, like a jolly brick!’
1870. Miss Bridgman, R. Lynne, I. xviii. 318. She believed Robert was no end of a brick.
7. ‘Bricks, or Briques, in Heraldry, are figures or bearings in arms, resembling a building of bricks’ (Chambers, Cycl. Supp., 1753).
B. Attrib. and Comb.
8. simple attrib. or adj. a. Of brick. Similarly brick-and-mortar, etc. b. In the shape of a brick.
c. 1440. Bokenham, trans. Higden, in Anglia, X. 18. Enviround abowte with bryke wallis.
1591. Spenser, Bellay’s Vis., ii. Nor brick nor marble was the wall.
1677. Moxon, Mech. Exerc. (1703), 129. Stone, or Brick Houses.
1753. Chambers, Cycl. Supp., s.v. Brick, Some also mention brick-tin, a sort of tin in that shape brought from Germany; and brick-soap, made in oblong pieces.
1851. Helps, Friends in C., I. 4. Red brick houses, with poplars coming up amongst them.
1865. M. Arnold, Ess. Crit., iv. 138. Margate, that brick-and-mortar image of English Protestantism.
1884. Littell’s Living Age, CLXI. 88. A … brick-and-stone erection.
9. General comb.: a. attrib., as brick-cart, -clamp, -colo(u)r, -furnace, -machine, -mason, -mo(u)ld, -pit, -trowel, -truck. b. objective, as brick-mo(u)lder. c. instrumental or parasynthetic, forming adjs., as brick-bound, -built, -colo(u)red, -fronted, -hemmed, -paved, -walled; also brick-building vbl. sb.
1881. J. Hawthorne, Fort. Fool, I. xviii. The trim and *brick-bound conventionality of the London mansion.
1631. Weever, Anc. Fun. Mon., 230. All the *bricke-building was done at his charges.
a. 1845. Hood, Turtles, iv. Before a lofty *brick-built pile Sir Peter stopp’d.
1663. Gerbier, Counsel, 46. He must not suffer *Brick-carts to overturne the load of Bricks.
1708. Lond. Gaz., No. 4416/4. [He] had on a *Brick-colour’d Coat.
1605. Leverton (Lincoln) Ch.-Wardens Acc. (MS.), 84 b. Pd. to Thoms. Jenkinson *brickmayson for vj daies whitteninge of the Churche … vijs.
1858. Glenny, Gard. Every-day Bk., 251. Whatever there is no room for in the Greenhouse must be consigned to the *brick-pits.
1677. Moxon, Mech. Exerc. (1703), 245. A *Brick Trowel.
1823. P. Nicholson, Pract. Build., 384. The Brick-trowel is used for spreading mortar, and likewise for cutting bricks.
1647. R. Stapylton, Juvenal, 184. *Brick-wall’d Babilon.
10. Special comb.: brick-ax(e, a double-headed ax with chisel-shaped blades, used by bricklayers; brick-barred a., inlaid (as a floor) with rows of bricks; brick-box, a ‘box of bricks’ (see 4); brick-bread (cf. brick-loaf); brick-burner, one who attends to a brick-kiln, a brick-maker; brick-clay, clay for making bricks; in Geol. a fine species of clay found lying upon boulder-clay; brick-dryer, an oven for drying bricks before burning; brick-end, a broken piece or fragment of brick; brick-loaf, a loaf shaped like a rectangular brick (see 3); brick-nog, -nogging, a method of building in which a timber framework is filled in with brickwork; brick-oil, an old drug compounded of powdered brick and linseed oil; brick-press, a machine for pressing and consolidating the molded clay; † brickstone, a brick; brick-tea, tea leaves pressed into the shape of a small brick, in which form it is imported into Russia, and also used as a medium of exchange in Mongolia; brick-trimmer, an arch or ‘trimmer,’ of brickwork for receiving the hearth of a fire-place; brick-yard, a place where bricks are made, a brickfield. Also BRICKFIELD, -KILN, -LAYER, etc.
1548–62. Norfolk Antiq. Misc. (1880), II. 10. A *brykaxe, a hamerax, a trowell, and a pykax.
1823. P. Nicholson, Pract. Build., 389. The Brick-axe is used for … cutting off the soffits of bricks.
1885. (title) First lessons in arithmetic, by means of *brick-box.
c. 1500. Cocke Lorell’s B. (1843), 10. Bewardes, *brycke borners, and canel rakers.
1703. Arts Improv., p. xiv. Our English Statute Laws yet in force, for the regulating of the Trades, of Brick-Burners, [etc.].
1837. Penny Cycl., vii. 245/2. *Brick clay … lies in abundance upon the London clay.
1868. Lossing, Hudson, 206. Its banks yield some of the finest brick-clay in the country.
1527. MS. Acc. S. John’s Hosp., Canterb., A lode of *brykendis xiiijd.
1858. Chamb. Jrnl., IX. 142. Enthroned on brick ends and pieces of stone.
1873. Mrs. Whitney, Other Girls, iii. (1876), 30. A *brick loaf … always seemed to me a man’s perversion of the idea of bread.
1825. Cobbett, Rur. Rides, 86. The labourers’ dwellings … are made of what they call *brick-nog.
1857. Turner, Dom. Archit., III. II. vii. 278. An old house of timber and brick-nogging.
1875. Ure, Dict. Arts, I. 533. *Brick oil … is a relic of old pharmacy.
1560. Whitehorne, Certayne Wayes (1573), 44 a. Taking it out, you shal see it made like unto a *bricke-stone.
1827. H. E. Lloyd, trans. Timkowski’s Trav., I. 35–6. The dry, dirty, and damaged leaves and stalks of the tea are … mixed with a glutinous substance, pressed into moulds, and dried in ovens. These blocks are called by the Russians, on account of their shape, *brick tea.
1852. Mrs. P. Sinnett, trans. Huc’s Journ. Tartary, 18. To boil some Mongol tea—the well-known brick tea, boiled with salt.
1872. Oliver, Elem. Bot., II. 147. ‘Brick Tea,’ used in Central Asia, is made from common kinds and refuse, mixed with bullock’s blood, pressed and dried in moulds.
1864. Leeds Mercury, 20 Sept., 4/2. He went to work at a *brick yard.
1884. Pall Mall Gaz., 8 April, 11/2. Single handed he has succeeded in emancipating some 20,000 little brickyard children from a regular Egyptian bondage.
