Back in the days of Middle English, the Anglo-French noun bruit, meaning "clamor" or "noise," rattled into English. Soon English speakers were also using it to mean "report" or "rumor" (it was applied especially to favorable reports). They also began using bruit the way the verb noise was used (and still occasionally is) with the meaning "to spread by rumor or report" (as in "The scandal was quickly noised about"). The English noun bruit is now considered archaic, apart from a medical sense that is pronounced like the French word and refers to one of the abnormal sounds heard on auscultation.
Noun
a film that captures the thunderous fury of medieval warfare and the bruit of a thousand clashing swords Verb
please don't bruit accusations about without confirming them first
Recent Examples on the Web
Noun
This kind of noise, called a bruit, is caused by turbulence in the blood flowing through an artery.—Lisa Sanders, New York Times, 13 June 2018
Verb
At present the Federal Reserve is bruiting the dangerous notion of pushing down a maximum charge of .14 cents per debit card swipe.—John Tamny, Forbes, 21 Feb. 2024 Since the energy crisis, which started in the fall of 1973, hydrogen has been bruited about as a future source of energy.—Llewellyn King, Forbes, 13 Feb. 2024 Dramatic action, long bruited about, comes late, though forcefully: the schoolteacher, Matthew Diamond, a mainlander who is ambivalent toward his charges, introduces the threat, and then the reality, of unwanted attention from the government.—Matthew Gavin Frank, Harper's Magazine, 21 Jan. 2023 The main downside to the bill identified by the legislative analysts and bruited about by the drug industry is that lower profits would lead to a reduction in R&D spending.—Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 18 Oct. 2019 It was bruited about, for example, in 1992, during the George H.W. Bush administration, and again in 2012, when there were hopes that Mitt Romney would win election over Barack Obama.—Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 30 July 2019 All these measures have been bruited about by economists inside and outside the government since 2012, when GDP growth slowed to a crawl even with oil prices still around $100 a barrel.—Leon Aron, National Review, 16 Feb. 2018 Normalization is a word much bruited about these days to describe the ways in which Americans have acceded to all sorts of indecent and dangerous phenomena since Trump launched his successful campaign for president more than two years ago.—James Kirchick, Slate Magazine, 22 Aug. 2017
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'bruit.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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