Word Confusion: Brews versus Bruise

Posted July 2, 2015 by Kathy Davie in Author Resources, Self-Editing, Word Confusions, Writing

Revised as of
28 Oct 2022


Pinterest pin for brews vs bruise

‘Tis the season for brews and bruises — if we ever get more than one day in a row of nice weather! — and I’m content to let the men do as they please with brews and bruises. For the writers among ya, however, I cannot begin to say how confused I was when I read about fighters inflicting brews on each other.

Now, I’ve never known a man who had to be forced to accept a beer. Forced to accept a bruise? Maybe. But it’s not that accepting I’d be!

Word Confusions . . .

. . . started as my way of dealing with a professional frustration with properly spelled words that were out of context in manuscripts I was editing as well as books I was reviewing. It evolved into a sharing of information with y’all. I’m hoping you’ll share with us words that have been a bête noire for you from either end. Consider sharing this Word Confusion with friends by tweeting it.

Brews Bruise

A row of ten glasses of brew from the Portsmouth Brewery

Portsmouth Brews by James Lee is under the CC BY 2.0 license, via Flickr.

—

A tasty looking selection of brews.
A bruise post-surgery

Post-Gallbladder Surgery Bruise is Rosetheboston’s own work under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license, via Wikimedia Commons.
Part of Grammar:
Morpheme: brew

Noun 1, 2;
Verb 1, intransitive & transitive

Plural for noun: brews
Gerund: brewing

Third person present verb: brews
Past tense or past participle: brewed
Present participle: brewing

Noun; Verb, intransitive & transitive

Plural for the noun: bruises
Gerund: bruising

Third person present verb: bruises
Past tense or past participle: bruised
Present participle: bruising

Noun:
A kind of beer 1

  • [Informal] A serving of beer

A cup or mug of tea or coffee

A mixture of events, people, or things that interact to form a more potent whole

[Northern English; dialect] A hill or overhanging cliff 2

Verb, intransitive:
To brew beer or ale 1

To be in the process of forming

Verb, transitive:
To prepare (as beer or ale) by steeping, boiling, and fermentation or by infusion and fermentation 1

To bring about

  • Contrive

To prepare (as tea) by infusion in hot water

Noun:
An injury appearing as an area of discolored skin on the body, caused by a blow or impact rupturing underlying blood vessels

  • An area of damage on a fruit, vegetable, or plant

Verb, intransitive:
Be susceptible to bruising

  • Crush or pound something

Verb, transitive:
Inflict an injury on someone or something causing discoloration of the skin

  • Hurt someone’s feelings
Examples:
Noun:
Have you tried those nonalcoholic brews yet? Some of them aren’t bad.

Let’s grab a few brews.

Ah, now that’s a lovely cup of brew.

It’s a dangerous brew of political turmoil and violent conflict.

She means to climb the brew tomorrow morning.

Verb, intransitive:
There’s a bad storm brewing out there.

There was more trouble brewing as the airline pilots went on strike.

Guinness is brewed in over 49 countries.

Verb, transitive:
Yer ma is brewin’ up the tea now.

I’m brewing up a batch of my October ale.

That Paul! He’s always brewing up trouble.

Let the tea brew for another minute.

Noun:
Just cut the bruise out of the banana, dear.

These apples are full of bruises. We’ll use them for pies and applesauce.

Who gave you those bruises?

Verb, intransitive:
Potatoes bruise easily, so treat them with care.

Bruise the raisins before adding to the mixture.

I bruise easily.

Verb, transitive:
He hit with enough force to bruise her badly.

She tried to bolster her bruised pride.

Derivatives:
Adjective: brewing, microbrewed, unbrewed
Noun: brewage, brewer, brewery, brewhouse, brewing, brewmaster, brewpub, brewski, microbrew, microbrewer, microbrewery
Verb: brew, microbrew, misbrew, rebrew 		Adjective: bruised
Noun: bruiser
History of the Word:
  1. Early Old English brēowan (verb) is of Germanic origin and related to the Dutch brouwen and the German brauen, the Old Norse brugga, the Old Saxon breuwan, and the Old High German briuwan, akin to the Latin fervēre meaning to boil.

    This evolved into the Middle English brewen.

  2. No idea.
 Old English brȳsan meaning crush or injure or damage with a blow, reinforced in Middle English by the Old French bruisier meaning break.

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C’mon, get it out of your system, bitch, whine, moan . . . which words are your pet peeves? Also, please note that I try to be as accurate as I can, but mistakes happen or I miss something. Email me if you find errors, so I can fix them . . . and we’ll all benefit!

Satisfy your curiosity about other Word Confusions on its homepage or more generally explore the index of self-editing posts. You may also want to explore Book Layout & Formatting Ideas, Formatting Tips, Grammar Explanations, Linguistics, Publishing Tips, the Properly Punctuated, Writing Ideas and Resources, and Working Your Website.

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Resources for Brews versus Bruise

Apple Dictionary.com

Dictionary.com: brew

The Free Dictionary: brew

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Pinterest Photo Credits

Budvar-mug is Rude’s own work under the CC BY 2.0 license while NCI Visuals Food Beer was photographed by Len Rizzi and is in the public domain. Play Fight by Brocken Inaglory is under the CC-BY-SA-3.0 license. All three are via Wikimedia Commons.

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