now Sc. and north. Also 8–9 brugh, 9 dial. bruff. [app. a. ON. borg, in sense of ‘wall, enclosure’: cf. the Ger. term hof ‘yard, court, area,’ applied to the same phenomenon; the comparison being to the outer wall of a feudal castle. Brough, brugh, now in north. Eng. dial. bruff, is the northern form; southern forms are BURR, and BURROW, in Promp. Parv. burwhe. (The word thus appears in origin identical with BROCH, brough round tower.)]
1. A luminous ring or circle around a shining body, esp. the moon; a halo.
[c. 1440. Promp. Parv., 56. Burwhe, sercle [1499 burrowe], orbiculus.]
1496. Dives & Paup. (W. de W.), I. xxvii. 64/1. The broughe or cercle about the candell lyght is token of rayne.
1635. Person, Varieties, II. iv. 62. These Circles by us called broughes, are a world of way remote from the bodies of the sunne and moone.
1808. Jamieson, Sc. Dict., s.v. Mone, A brugh, or hazy circle round the moon is accounted a certain prognostic of rain.
1855. Whitby Gloss., Bruff, the halo round the moon, when it shines through a mist or haze.
1875. Robinson, Whitby Gloss. (E. D. S.), s.v. Bruff, ‘The larger the bruff, the nearer the storm’; or, ‘the bigger the bruff, the nearer the breeze.’
1882. Standard, 26 Dec., 7/4. When round the moon there is a brugh The weather will be cold and rough.
2. Curling: see quot.
1857. Chambers, Inform. People, II. 683/1. s.v. Curling, Brough—several concentric circles, varying from one to fourteen feet in diameter, drawn round each tee.
