brickbats

English

Etymology

From brickbat +‎ -s. The plural only sense (“small rocky particles moving as a group in space”) was coined by the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879) and is used chiefly in reference to his writings.[1]

Pronunciation

Noun

brickbats pl (plural only)

  1. (astronomy, informal) Small rocky particles moving as a group in space, especially as forming rings around planets.

Noun

brickbats

  1. plural of brickbat

Verb

brickbats

  1. third-person singular simple present indicative of brickbat

References

  1. ^ “brickbat, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, September 2023.
This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.