This is another word that my daughter came running out to show me in her history book. And one I found even more intriguing when I looked it up on my own, as etymonline doesn’t, in fact, agree with said history book!
So, according to A History of Us, the phrase brand-new was once bran-new. This because imported items were shipped in barrels that used bran as a packing material. So if something was fresh from the crates, just taken from the bran…
Other sources, however, say that the original was brand-new, dating from the 1500s…though the idea is actually rather parallel, in that it came from the notion of being straight from the forge (brand at the time meant “fire). Shakespeare actually used fire-new.
So whether it has a D or not, it certainly carries the same meaning–something freshly made.
Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary.