broil

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA^(key): /bɹɔɪl/

• Audio (Southern England)

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• Rhymes: -ɔɪl

From Middle English broillen, brulen (“to broil, cook”), from Anglo-Norman bruiller, broiller (“to broil, roast”), Old French brusler, bruller (“to broil, roast, char”), a blend of two Old French verbs:

• bruir (“to burn”), from Frankish *brōjan (“to burn, scald”)
• usler (“to scorch”), from Latin ustulō (“to scorch”)

broil (third-person singular simple present broils, present participle broiling, simple past and past participle broiled)

1. (transitive, Canada, US, obsolete in the UK) To cook by direct, radiant heat.

   Synonym: (British) grill

   • 1788, Hannah Glasse, The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy: Which Far Exceeds Any Thing of the Kind Yest Published‎, page 6:

     To broil a pigeon. When you broil them, do them in the same manner, and take care your fire is very clear, and set your gridiron high, that they may not burn, and have a little parsley and butter in a cup. You may split them, and broil them with a little pepper and salt, and you may roast them only with a little parsley and butter in a dish.

   • 1798, Richard Briggs, The English Art of Cookery…With Bills of Fare for Every Month in the Year…A New Edition‎, page 70:

     To broil Red Mullet. Neither seale nor gut your mullet, wipe them very clean in a cloth, butter half a sheet of writing paper for each fish, put them in, and fasten it all round; have a very clear fire, broil them very gently for twenty minutes, hen put them in a dish, with anchovy sauce and plain butter in boats.

   • 1813, Bell Plumptre, Domestic Management; Or, the Healthful Cookery-Book‎, page 247:

     To broil fish. To broil trout in a third way. When they are cleaned and washed, dry them well in a napkin. Then bind them about with packthread, sprinkle them with melted butter and salt, and broil them over a gentle fire, turning them from time to time.

2. (transitive, Canada, US) To expose to great heat.
3. (intransitive, Canada, US) To be exposed to great heat.

• pan-broil

broil (plural broils)

1. Food prepared by broiling.
   • 1863, J[oseph] Sheridan Le Fanu, The House by the Church-yard. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Tinsley, Brothers, […], →OCLC:

     Cluffe, externally acquiescing, had yet made up his mind, if a decent opportunity presented, to be detected and made prisoner, and that the honest troubadours should sup on a hot broil, and sip some of the absent general's curious Madeira at the feet of their respective mistresses, with all the advantage which a situation so romantic and so private would offer.

• London broil

Middle English broilen (“to quarrel, present in disorder”), from Anglo-Norman broiller (“to mix up”), from Vulgar Latin *brodiculāre (“to jumble together”) from *brodum (“broth, stew”), from Frankish *broþ (“broth”), from Proto-Germanic *bruþą (“broth”).

• broyl (obsolete)

broil (third-person singular simple present broils, present participle broiling, simple past and past participle broiled)

1. (transitive) To cause a rowdy disturbance; embroil.
2. (intransitive, obsolete) To brawl.

broil (plural broils)

1. (archaic) A brawl; a rowdy disturbance.

   come to broils

   • 1756, [Edmund Burke], A Vindication of Natural Society: Or, A View of the Miseries and Evils Arising to Mankind from Every Species of Artificial Society. […], London: […] M. Cooper […], →OCLC, page 32:

     But to give the faireſt Play to every ſide of the Queſtion, I vvill own that there is a Haughtineſs, and Fierceneſs in human Nature, vvhich vvill cauſe innumerable Broils, place Men in vvhat State you pleaſe; but ovvning this, I ſtill inſiſt in charging to Political Regulations, that theſe Broils are ſo frequent, ſo cruel, and attended vvith ſo deplorable Conſequences.

   • 1819 December 20 (indicated as 1820), Walter Scott, chapter XXVII, in Ivanhoe; a Romance. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co. […], →OCLC:

     "Away with this prating dotard," said Front-de Boeuf, "lock him up in the chapel, to tell his beads till the broil be over. It will be a new thing to the saints in Torquilstone to hear aves and paters; they have not been so honoured, I trow, since they were cut out of stone."

   • a. 1822 (date written), John Keats, “[Tragedies.] Otho the Great: A Tragedy in Five Acts.”, in [Horace Elisha Scudder], editor, The Complete Poetical Works and Letters of John Keats, Cambridge edition, Boston, Mass., New York, N.Y.: Houghton, Mifflin and Company […], published 1899, →OCLC, Act I, (please specify the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals), page 159, column 1, lines 1-2:

     So, I am safe emerged from these broils! / Amid the wreck of thousands I am whole […]

   • 1840, Robert Chambers, William Chambers, Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, volume 8, page 382:

     Since the provinces declared their independence, broils and squabblings of one sort and another have greatly retarded the advancement which they might otherwise have made.

• skirmish

• LIBOR, libro-