brews

makes beer, ale, tea, coffee, etc.; concocts, schemes, devises: brews a plan

Not to be confused with:

bruise – an injury that does not break the skin but produces a discoloration; contusion; to injure slightly: bruise someone’s feelings

brew

(bro͞o)

v. brewed, brew·ing, brews

v.tr.

1. To make (ale or beer) from malt and hops by infusion, boiling, and fermentation.

2. To make (a beverage) by boiling, steeping, or mixing various ingredients: brew tea.

3. To concoct; devise: brew a plot to overthrow the government.

v.intr.

1. To make ale or beer as an occupation.

2. To be made by boiling or steeping: As the coffee brewed, I paced in the kitchen.

3. To be imminent; impend: "storms brewing on every frontier" (John Dos Passos).

a. A beverage made by brewing.

b. A serving of such a beverage.

2. Something produced as if by brewing; a mix: Their politics were a strange brew of idealism and self-interest.

[Middle English brewen, from Old English brēowan; see bhreu- in Indo-European roots.]

brew′age n.

brew′er n.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Mentioned in

References in classic literature

I had learned more expensive brews. Not for years had I drunk steam beer; but when I had, I had drunk with men, and I guessed I could show these youngsters some ability in beer-guzzling.

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A man's wit, however, is quick and inventive in the wilderness; a thought suggested itself to the captain, how he might brew a delectable beverage.

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Men made the brew for him, and he paid them in money.

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`Forthwith Medea made Aeson a sweet young boy and stripped his old age from him by her cunning skill, when she had made a brew of many herbs in her golden cauldrons.'

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The good woman set oat-bread before me and a cold grouse, patting my shoulder and smiling to me all the time, for she had no English; and the old gentleman (not to be behind) brewed me a strong punch out of their country spirit.

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She saw me looking at it, and she said, "You could drink without hurt all the strong beer that's brewed there now, boy."

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Yea, verily, hearts alive, we'd brew choice punch in the spread of his spout-hole there, and from that live punch-bowl quaff the living stuff!

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Then Captain Jim would brew them tea and tell them "tales of land and sea And whatsoever might betide The great forgotten world outside."

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Another time she would have stilled the cravings for food until reaching her own home, where she would have brewed herself a cup of tea and taken a snack of anything that was available.

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Apart from the one fundamental nastiness the luckless mouse succeeds in creating around it so many other nastinesses in the form of doubts and questions, adds to the one question so many unsettled questions that there inevitably works up around it a sort of fatal brew, a stinking mess, made up of its doubts, emotions, and of the contempt spat upon it by the direct men of action who stand solemnly about it as judges and arbitrators, laughing at it till their healthy sides ache.

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There's a very pretty brew in tap at The Pure Drop--though, to be sure, not so good as at Rolliver's."

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That must have been the strongest brandy and soda that was ever brewed, to send me off like that."

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