▪ I. browse, n.1
(braʊz)
Forms: 6–8 brouse, brouze, 7 brouce, brouss, 7– browze, browse.
[app. a. 16th c. F. broust (OF. brost, mod.F. brout) ‘bud, young shoot’. (But sense 3 was evidently taken from the verb in English.) The loss of the final t presents some difficulties: the occas. spellings brouce, brouss indicate an early form (bruːs), which may possibly have been a corruption of brousts collective pl.]
1. Young shoots and twigs of shrubs, trees, etc.
| 1523 Fitzherb. Husb. §132 If thou haue any trees to..croppe for the fyre-wodde, croppe them in wynter that thy beastes maye eate the brouse and the mosse of the bowes and also the yues. 1558 Phaër æneid vii. G iij b, This Laurel bushe ful thick of browse. 1596 Spenser F.Q. iii. x. 45 Their gotes upon the brouzes fedd. 1617 Markham Caval. i. 5 Bushes, brouse, and some hie or thicke trees for shelter. 1669 Worlidge Syst. Agric. (1681) 323 Browse or brouce, or brutte, the tops of the Branches of Trees that Cattle usually feed on. 1721 Dudley in Phil. Trans. XXXI. 168 In the Winter they live upon Browse, or the tops of Bushes and young Trees. 1874 C. Geikie Life Woods vi. 118 Browse is the Canadian word for the tender twigs of trees. |
2. Fodder for cattle, consisting of young shoots and twigs; that which is or can be browsed.
| 1552 Huloet, Browse, or meat for beastes in snow tyme, vesca. 1580 Baret Alv. B 1400 Browse made for beastes of withie bowes. 1621 Fletcher Thierry & Th. i. i, Like leaves they would..become browse for every beast. 1697 Dryden Virg. (1806) I. 261 Th' unworthy browze Of buffaloes. 1706 J. Philips Cyder i. 108 How the Goats their shrubby Brouze Gnaw pendent. 1837 Howitt Rur. Life v. ii. (1862) 367 Hollies, which were encouraged in most ancient forests for winter browze. |
3. The action of browsing.
| 1810 Cromek Rem. Nithsdale Song, All the flocks at browse. 1820 Scott Abbot iii, The cattle are even now returning from their scanty browse. 1830 W. Phillips Mt. Sinai iv. 114 As when at browse..A herd of deer..disport them. 1850 Lynch Theo. Trin. v. 80 [I] listened to the browse of the sheep as they cropped the grass. |
Hence (or from the verb) browse-wood.
| 1598 J. Manwood Lawes Forest vi. §1 (1615) 51/2 The Foresters..must prouide Browse-wood to bee cut downe for [the Deer] to feed upon. 1664 Evelyn Sylva 72 It is advis'd not to cut off the Browse-wood of Oaks in Copses. 1835 E. Jesse Glean. Nat. Hist. Ser. iii. 239 Right of common for four horses, and the use of browse-wood. |
▪ II. browse, n.2 Mining.
Also brouze.
(See quots.)
| 1875 Ure Dict. Arts I. 547 Browse, a metallurgical term for a variety of slag. Ibid. III. 59 A mass of heated fuel, mixed with partly-fused and semi-reduced ore, called Brouze, floating upon a stratum of melted lead. |
▪ III. browse, browze, v.
(braʊz)
Forms: (6 brose), 6–7 brouse, 6–8 brouze, 7 broose, 7–9 browze, 6– browse.
[f. browse n.1, or perhaps directly from 16th c. F. brouster, now brouter (in same sense), according to Littré, f. F. broust, brout ‘bud, young shoot’; the Eng. form being influenced by that of the n., q.v. The pronunciation with -z may have begun in the verb; cf. the analogy of grass, graze, advice, advise, use, to use, etc. (Or if the verb was ever broust in Eng., we might suppose the final -t to have been lost, by confusion with that of the pa. tense and pa. pple.)]
1. a. intr. or absol. To feed on the leaves and shoots of trees and bushes; to crop the shoots or tender parts of rough plants for food: said of goats, deer, cattle. (Sometimes carelessly used for graze, but properly implying the cropping of scanty vegetation.)
| 1542 Boorde Dyetary xvi. (1870) 275 At the x byt on the grasse, or brosynge on the tree. 1580 Hollyband Treas. Fr. Tong, Brouter & manger, to brouze, to feede like an Oxe or Goate. 1593 Nashe Christ's T. 32 b, All the bushes and boughes..were hewd downe and feld for men (like brute beastes) to brouze on. 1611 Shakes. Wint. T. iii. iii. 68. 1612 T. Taylor Comm. Titus ii. 1 (1619) 336 Cattell forsaking the..pastures to broose vpon leaues and boughes. 1789 Mrs. Piozzi Journ. France I. 38 Goats..browze upon the steeps of Snowdon. 1848 Carpenter Anim. Phys. 141 The Giraffe uses its long tongue to lay hold of the young shoots on which it browzes. 1870 Bryant Homer I. ii. 74 The horses browsed on lotus-leaves. |
b. fig. or transf.
| 1611 Shakes. Cymb. iii. vi. 38 There is cold meat i' th' Caue, we'l brouz on that. 1823 Lamb Elia Ser. i. xv. (1865) 119 And browsed at will upon that fair and wholesome pasturage [a good Library]. 1870 Lowell Among my Bks. Ser. i. (1873) 9 We thus get a glimpse of him browsing—for..he was always a random reader—in his father's library. 1927 J. S. Huxley Religion without Revelation iv. 127 Browsing in the public library at Colorado Springs,..I came across some essays of Lord Morley. 1965 Crescendo Sept. 1/1 While browsing through a local bookshop recently I came across your excellent publication. 1968 Listener 22 Aug. 242/3 Hobson-Jobson is not of course a book to read right through but to browse in—something like, but on a vaster scale, Fowler's Modern English Usage. |
2. trans. To crop and eat (leaves, twigs, etc.).
| 1523 Fitzherb. Husb. §131 Fell the vnder wodde fyrste in wynter that thy cattell or beastes maye eate & brouse the toppes. 1591 Spenser Virg. Gnat 82 Others..brouze the woodbine twigges. 1612 Drayton Poly-olb. xviii. 284. 1789 Wolcott (P. Pindar) Odes xiii. 4 Forc'd, forc'd to brouse, like goats, the lanes for food. 1859 Darwin Orig. Spec. iii. (1878) 56 Little trees which had been perpetually browsed down by the cattle. 1864 Daily Tel. 21 May, Herds of deer have browsed all the leaves away as high as their necks could reach. |
3. causal. To feed (cattle) on (twigs, etc.).
| 1550 [see browser 1]. 1669 Worlidge Syst. Agric. vi. §2 (1681) 94 Rangers and Keepers of Parks..brousing their Deer on it. 1876 Rep. Vermont Board Agric. III. 74 It was customary, in years past, when farmers were short of hay, to browse their cattle, as it was called. |