Meaning

noun a restraint used to slow or stop a vehicle

noun any of various ferns of the genus Pteris having pinnately compound leaves and including several popular houseplants

noun large coarse fern often several feet high; essentially weed ferns; cosmopolitan

originFrom Old English *bracu, attested in a plural compound form fearnbraca (“thickets of fern”), probably from Proto-Germanic *brekaną (“to break”) and influenced by sense 2 (“fern”). Compare Middle Low German brake (“stump, branch”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0