brainchild
a clever idea
TRANSLATION
brainchild = die Idee, die Erfindung, das geistige Kind --- GOOGLE INDEX brainchild: approximately 12,000,000 Google hits
STATISTICS
IN THE PRESS
The record-breaking, 350hp car was the BRAINCHILD of Sunbeam's chief engineer and racing team manager, Louis Coatalen.
(BBC News)
---
The Scroogled campaign is the BRAINCHILD of Mark Penn, a noted strategist who has worked on campaign strategies for the Clintons, Tony Blair and other political heavyweights.
(International Business Times)
(BBC News)
---
The Scroogled campaign is the BRAINCHILD of Mark Penn, a noted strategist who has worked on campaign strategies for the Clintons, Tony Blair and other political heavyweights.
(International Business Times)
Did you
know?
brainchild
noun
- a clever and original idea, plan, or invention
(Cambridge Dictionary)
---
As the word implies, brainchild is a child of your brain, a product of your creativity, an idea that you generate. The expression surfaced in the 1880s, not long after Charles Darwin claimed that the concept of evolution by natural selection was his brainchild.
Some view Darwin's work as an illegitimate brainchild since several other scientists had already addressed this idea in earlier works. Darwin still gets most of the credit however, which just goes to prove that the field of science has its own selection process.
How did we come to call the most sophisticated organ in the human body the "brain?" It stems from the Old English brægen and further from a Proto-Germanic source bragnam meaning the skull and the organ inside it. An Old English word for head was brægnloca, which might be translated as "brain locker." The Old English brægenseoc, literally brainsick, referred to crazy, mad or confused.
The figurative sense of brain/brains as "intellectual power" is from the late 14th century.
Child also stems from an Old English source - cild - meaning fetus, infant, unborn or newly born person. Cild further evolved from the Proto-Germanic "kiltham." The unusual plural "children" developed in Old English where the nominative plural was identical to the singular "cild." A separate plural - cildru - eventually evolved and by the 12th century had changed to children.
---
SYNONYMS
concept, creation, discovery, idea, innovation, intellectual property
---
SMUGGLE OWAD into today's conversation
"Our best selling iPhone App was Bill's brainchild."
---
Thanks to Jennifer for suggesting today's word!
noun
- a clever and original idea, plan, or invention
(Cambridge Dictionary)
---
As the word implies, brainchild is a child of your brain, a product of your creativity, an idea that you generate. The expression surfaced in the 1880s, not long after Charles Darwin claimed that the concept of evolution by natural selection was his brainchild.
Some view Darwin's work as an illegitimate brainchild since several other scientists had already addressed this idea in earlier works. Darwin still gets most of the credit however, which just goes to prove that the field of science has its own selection process.
How did we come to call the most sophisticated organ in the human body the "brain?" It stems from the Old English brægen and further from a Proto-Germanic source bragnam meaning the skull and the organ inside it. An Old English word for head was brægnloca, which might be translated as "brain locker." The Old English brægenseoc, literally brainsick, referred to crazy, mad or confused.
The figurative sense of brain/brains as "intellectual power" is from the late 14th century.
Child also stems from an Old English source - cild - meaning fetus, infant, unborn or newly born person. Cild further evolved from the Proto-Germanic "kiltham." The unusual plural "children" developed in Old English where the nominative plural was identical to the singular "cild." A separate plural - cildru - eventually evolved and by the 12th century had changed to children.
---
SYNONYMS
concept, creation, discovery, idea, innovation, intellectual property
---
SMUGGLE OWAD into today's conversation
"Our best selling iPhone App was Bill's brainchild."
---
Thanks to Jennifer for suggesting today's word!
