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Brat

Katzenjammer Kids on Parade.

Dear Word Detective: I found your web page discussing the possible origin of the word “brat.” My wife is German and we were watching some out of control children at a wedding yesterday and she said that in Germany they were called “Satansbraten,” or “Devil’s Roast.” I was just curious if that could also be a possible origin. — Leighton Shell.

That’s an interesting theory. I don’t speak German, so I’m at a bit of a disadvantage here. But my impression is that the logic of “Satansbraten,” widely translated as “problem child” or “brat,” is that the noxious little nipper is either more than likely to end up roasting on a spit in Hell or is, in fact, a devil or demon incarnate. Seems a little harsh to me, but then again I’ve also been to a few weddings terrorized by out of control children, so maybe not.

As I said in the column I wrote back in 2004, “brat” is a pejorative colloquial English term for “a child, especially an ill-tempered, spoiled or badly behaved child.” In his 1755 Dictionary of the English Language, Samuel Johnson defined the word (which first appears in the written record in 1557) as “a child, so called in contempt.” But in the 16th and 17th centuries, “brat” was also used without contempt or condemnation to mean any small, usually “insignificant” child (as in the term “beggar’s brat,” a child deployed to evoke sympathy from passers-by).

It seems plausible that “brat” could have arisen in English as a borrowed and clipped form of the German “Satansbraten,” but I see a couple of problems on the English side of the border. First, the earliest written examples of “brat” found so far use the term to simply mean “child” or “offspring” with no pejorative overtones (“What [sin] hath Aeneas, my brat, committed agaynst [thee]?”, 1582). But “Satansbraten” has, I assume, always been used pejoratively, as positive invocations of Satan are somewhat rare.

Second, no one, to my knowledge, has found the sort of intermediate stages of development to be expected when a foreign word is taken into English and modified, such as the original word being used in English text and explained (e.g., “as the Germans say…”). So I tend to doubt that “Satansbraten” is the source of “brat.” It is possible, of course, that the development of “brat” was influenced in some way by “Satansbraten,” but that would be nearly impossible to document.

Unfortunately, a definitive explanation of where, exactly, “brat” did come from is not possible. One intriguing theory traces it to another kind of “brat” in English, this one meaning “a cloak made of coarse cloth, especially as worn by a child” (from the Old Irish “bratt,” cloth, cloak). This “brat,” meaning a sort of smock or apron worn by children, was, according to this theory, eventually adopted as a term for the children themselves.

Interestingly, this “brat/cloth” theory closely parallels a theory suggested to explain the development of our English word “girl,” which I mentioned in a recent column and which originally meant a child of either sex. The Old English word “gyrela,” meaning “garment,” is the suggested source for “girl,” and once again the theory is that the name for an article of clothing gradually became the word for the wearer. The parallels between the theories are striking, but since neither theory has been proven, one cannot be invoked to argue for the other, and so we are left with two mysteries on our hands.

5 comments to Brat

  • Betsey Metz

    When reading an article by Stephen Heyman in the Travel Section of the NYTimes (8/31/14)I became curious about the origin of the word “brat” so looked it up and found your exposition back in 2011 on The Word Detective. Heyman was referring to an exhibition in Vienna that included postcards from Sigmund Freud written to his wife while on holiday in Switzerland. The museum translated the message as “Say hello to the brats. . .” The usage surprised me which is why I looked it up. I wonder if the word “brats” had appeared in the German original. I trust Freud was using the term as Americans might say “little devils.”

  • Gentle Kisses

    The word “brat” in Russian means “brother”.

    I always reckoned that it was a reference to a naughty little brother … maybe “Satansbraten” meant something like “Satan’s little brother”… I suppose it would enter the lexicon in or around the years 300 to 500.

  • Sequuitor

    For what it is forth… my 1850 Latin lexicon offers as a Latin translation ( amongst a number of options) infants. None of the options given carry negative connotations nor appear pejorative.
    I further ponder wether brat might be a corruption of bractus- meaning branch- possibly construed as scion.
    Just musing- anyone familiar with Greek , Aramaic, or some similarly ancient language care to weigh in ?

  • Gwenyth Jett

    ? explained “BRAT” as a status standing for British Regiment Attached Traveler, and it was assigned to families who were able to travel abroad with a soldier. Eventually, it just referred to military children. But the term stuck, and was adopted in many places around the world, including in the U.S., Apr 12, 2017.
    I am proudly a US Army BRAT.

  • Charlene Tansengco

    Just a brat looking at the definition of a brat, nothing else

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