▪ I. brough 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 (brʌx), now in north. Eng. dial. bruff (brʊf), 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 D. 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. |
▪ II. brough
variant of broch, round tower.