3 November 2024
A brat is a spoiled or misbehaving child. The origin of the word is not known for certain, although there are at least two hypotheses that have some degree of evidence behind them. It may come from an Old English word of Celtic origin, bratt, meaning a cloak. The same word can be found in Old Irish. The other hypothesis, which I favor, is that it is a clipping of the Scots bratchart, meaning an unruly child.
The Old English bratt is only attested once in the extant corpus. It appears in a tenth-century gloss of the Latin pallium in the Lindisfarne Gospel of Matthew. It remained rare through the Middle English period, where it is only attested in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale:
Yet of that art they kan nat wexen sadde,
For unto hem it is a bitter sweete—
So semeth it—for nadde they but a sheete
Which that they myghte wrappe hem inne a-nyght,
And a brat to walken inne by daylyght,
They wolde hem selle and spenden on this craft.
(Yet of that art they cannot be satisfied,
For unto them it is a bitter sweet—
So it seems—for had they nothing but a sheet
Which they might wrap themselves in at night,
And a cloak to walk in by daylight,
They would sell them and spend it on this craft.)
It starts appearing more frequently at the start of the sixteenth century, and initially in Scottish sources. The poet William Dunbar uses the word twice, once unambiguously to mean a cloak and once where it could be interpreted as either a cloak or an illegitimate child. The ambiguous use appears in his poem “The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedie.” The poem is a depiction of a flyting, a poetic exchange of insults, that took place c. 1500 between Dunbar and fellow poet William Kennedy. In it, Dunbar says of Kennedy:
Iersche brybour baird, vyle beggar with thy brattis,
Cuntbittin crawdoun, Kennedy, coward of kynd,
Evill farit and dryit, as Densmen on the rattis,
Lyk as the gleddis had on thy gulesnowt dynd,
Mismaid monstour, ilk mone owt of thy mynd,
Renunce, rebald, thy rymyng, thow bot royis.
Thy trechour tung hes tane ane Heland strynd,
Ane Lawland ers wald mak a bettir noyis.
(Highland vagabond bard, vile beggar with your brats,
Syphilitic skulker, Kennedy, coward by nature,
Ugly and dried up, like Danes on the wheels,
Like the kites had on the yellow-snout dined,
Deformed monster, each moon out of your mind,
Renounce, rogue, your rhyming, you but rave,
Your treacherous tongue has taken a Highland strain,
A Lowland arse would make a better noise.)
The unambiguous use is in his “General Satyre,” written c. 1510:
This to correct, thay schoir with mony crakkis,
But littill effect of speir or battell-ax,
Quhen curage lakkis the corss that sowld mak kene;
Sa mony jakkis, and brattis on beggaris bakkis,
Within this land was nevir hard nor sene.
(This to correct, those who threaten with many boasts,
But have little effect of spear or battle-axe,
When courage lacks, the body that it should make brave;
So many doublets, and brats on beggar’s backs,
Within this land was never heard nor seen.)
An unambiguous use of brat to mean a child appears in 1557, in a poem by Henry Howard, the earl of Surrey:
What path list you to tread? what trade will you assay?
The courts of plea, by braul, & bate, driue ge[n]tle peace away.
In house, for wife, and childe, there is but cark and care:
With trauail, and with toyl ynough, in feelds we vse to fare.
Upon the seas lieth dreed: the rich in foraine land,
Doo fear the losse: and there, the poore, like misers poorely stand.
Strife, with a wife, without, your thrift full hard to see:
Yong brats, a trouble: none at all. a maym it seems to bee:
Youth, fond, age hath no hert, and pincheth all to nye.
Choose then the leeser of these twoo, no life, or soon to dye.
(What path do you choose to tread? What trade will you try?
The courts of pleading, by brawling and contention, drive gentle peace away.
In a house, for a wife, and child, there is but anxiety and care:
With travail, and with toil enough, in fields we use to sow.
Upon the seas lies dread: the rich in foreign land.
Do fear the loss; and there, the poor, like misers poorly stand.
Strife with a wife, without, your prosperity very hard to see:
Young brats, a trouble: none at all, a wound it seems to be:
Youth, a fool, age has no heart, and squeezes nearly everything.
Choose then the lesser of these two, no life, or soon to die.)
The connection between a cloak and a child isn’t clear on its face. But in the sixteenth century, the cloak sense specialized to refer to child’s pinafore. This sense of a child’s pinafore could easily have transferred over to the child itself. The pinafore sense appears in the surviving corpus a few decades later than the child sense, but given the gaps in the corpus, we can’t really say which sense came first. The dates are close enough to be labeled as contemporaneous. The word also started appearing more commonly in Early-Modern English, although it’s difficult to say whether this is due to an actual increase in usage or to simply more texts surviving due to the advent of the printing press.
Alternatively, the child sense could stem from the Scots bratchart, which also means child and itself is of unknown origin. If this hypothesis is correct, the cloak sense is etymologically unrelated. The bratchart hypothesis has the advantage of explaining why the early uses of the word are all in Scotland. It has the disadvantage, however, of not being recorded until nearly a century after Dunbar’s ambiguous use and some forty years after Howard’s poem. But given the gaps in the surviving corpus, even a century-long gap is not impossible, and if both of Dunbar’s uses are in the cloak sense, the gap is even narrower.
Bratchart appears in another flyting, Alexander Montgomerie’s Flyting Betwixt Montgomery and Polwart, which was written some time before 1598. This flyting was between Alexander Montgomerie and Patrick Hume, a.k.a., Polwart:
The King of Pharie, and his court, with the Elfe Queen,
With many Elrich Incubus, was rydand that night.
There ane elf, on ane aipe, ane vnsell begat,
Into ane pot, by Pomathorne;
That bratchart in ane busse was borne;
They fand ane monster, on the morne,
War fac’d nor a Cat.
(The king of Fairy, and his court, with the Elf queen,
With many supernatural incubus, was riding that night.
There an elf, and an ape, a devil begat,
Into a pot, by Pomothorn;
That bratchart in a bush was born;
They found a monster, in the morning,
Wicked-faced, not a cat.)
Pomothorne is either a reference to Polwarth, a neighborhood of Edinburgh and the home of Hume or to an unincorporated area near Edinburgh with that name.
So that’s what we know about the origin of brat. As to Brat Pack, the commonly told story of its origin is wrong. The Brat Pack was a grouping of young and bankable movie stars in the 1980s, modeled after the famed Rat Pack of the 1960s. But exactly which stars constituted the pack varied in the early years, before settling in on a canonical grouping. The first known use of brat pack, uncovered by researcher Fred Shapiro, is from the Times-Colonist of Victoria, British Columbia of 1 April 1984:
