brook

/brʊk/

/brʊk/

Other forms: brooked; brooking

A brook is a small stream. On a hot day, you might enjoy wading in a babbling brook. As a verb, brook is a rather stuffy word for "put up with." The lord of the manor might say, "I will brook no trespassing on my land."

Brook is tailor-made for talking about what you won't stand for — it's always "brook no..." If you brook no criticism of your friend, it means you won't let people speak ill of her. If you brook no brooks, it means you've developed a bizarre hatred of streams and will spend the rest of your days trying to avoid them.

Definitions of brook

1. noun

   a natural stream of water smaller than a river (and often a tributary of a river)
   synonyms: creek

   examples:

   Bull Run

   a creek in northeastern Virginia where two battles were fought in the American Civil War

   Aegospotamos

   a creek emptying into the Hellespont in present-day Turkey; at its mouth in 405 BC the Spartan fleet under Lysander defeated the Athenians and ended the Peloponnesian War

   types:

   brooklet

   a small brook

   type of:

   stream, watercourse

   a natural body of running water flowing on or under the earth
2. verb

   put up with something or somebody unpleasant
   synonyms: abide, bear, digest, endure, put up, stand, stick out, stomach, suffer, support, tolerate

   suffer

   experience (emotional) pain

   types:

   accept, live with, swallow

   tolerate or accommodate oneself to

   hold still for, stand for

   tolerate or bear

   bear up

   endure cheerfully

   take lying down

   suffer without protest; suffer or endure passively

   take a joke

   listen to a joke at one's own expense

   sit out

   endure to the end

   pay

   bear (a cost or penalty), in recompense for some action

   get one's lumps, take one's lumps

   suffer the results or consequences of one's behavior or actions

   type of:

   allow, countenance, let, permit

   consent to, give permission