▪ I. braze, v.1
(breɪz)
Also 1 brasian, 6 brasen.
[OE. brasian, f. bræs, brass; but as no examples are found in ME., the 16th c. verb may have been formed anew on the analogy of glaze, graze.]
1. trans. To make of brass; to cover or ornament with brass.
| [c 1000 ælfric Gram. xxxvi. 215 Aero, ic brasiᵹe.] 1552 Huloet, Brasen, or make with brasse, æro. 1611 Cotgr., Bronzer, to Braze; to make of, or couer with, brasse. c 1615 Chapman Odyss. xv. (R.) A caldron or a tripod, richly braz'd. 1693 W. Robertson Phraseol. Gen. 278 To braze or cover with brass. |
2. fig. a. To make hard like brass, harden, inure; b. ‘to harden to impudence’ (J.) (Cf. brazen-faced. But some view this as a sense of braze v.2, taken as = harden in the fire.)
| 1602 Shakes. Ham. iii. iv. 37 And let me wring your heart..If damned Custome haue not braz'd it so, That it is proofe and bulwarke against Sense. 1608 R. Armin Nest Ninn. (1842) 1, I am brazed by your fauours, made bould in your ostended curtesies. 1616 Breton Good & Bad (1616) 31 His face is brazed that he cannot blush. 1648 W. Jenkyn Blind Guide iii. 62 You reply nothing, but new braze your face. 1833 Fraser's Mag. VIII. 707 Custom has so brazed the whole fraternity to these nefarious practices. |
3. transf. To colour like brass.
| 1864 W. W. Story Roba di R. xix. 402 The sunset brazes with splendour the throbbing sky. 1866 Lowell Poet. Wks. (1879) 372 Clouds That braze the horizon's western rim. |
▪ II. braze, v.2
(breɪz)
Also 6 brase.
[? a. F. brase-r to solder, in OF. braser to burn; prob. a. ON. *brasa to fire, expose to fire (cf. Sw. brasa to flame, Du. brase to roast). But the modern Eng. and French sense ‘solder’ does not come obviously from ‘fire’: one might suppose that in Eng. it was taken from or influenced by braze v.1: but whence then the F. braser?]
† 1. To fire, expose to the action of fire. Obs.
| 1581 Lambarde Eiren. iv. iv. 458 If any arrowhead Smith haue not well boiled, brased and hardened at the point with steele..such heads of arrowes..as he hath made. |
2. To solder (with an alloy of brass and zinc).
| 1677 Moxon Mech. Exerc. (1703) 12 You may have occasion sometimes to Braze..a piece of work; but it is used by Smiths only, when their work is so thin, or small, that it will not endure Welding. 1835 Sir J. Ross N.-W. Pass. ii. 12 So much worn, as to require a piece to be brazed to it, to restore its thickness. 1875 ‘Stonehenge’ Brit. Sports i. v. xi. §1. 1881 Greener Gun 235 It is a common practice with foreign makers to braze their barrels together from end to end. |
▪ III. braze, n.
(breɪz)
[f. braze v.2]
The process of brazing; a brazed joint. So ˈbrazeless a.
| 1897 Westm. Gaz. 6 Dec. 9/1 Among the other novelties are the brazeless but fixed joints shrunk together. 1898 Ibid. 16 Apr. 6/1 The other process, which is described as brazeless. 1934 Webster, Braze. 1955 Brazing Man. (Amer. Welding Soc.) iii. 21 The American Welding Society defines a brazing filler metal as a metal to be added in making a braze. |
▪ IV. braze
obs. form of braise.