brew
verb · noun
Simple meaning
To make tea or coffee by mixing tea leaves or coffee beans with hot water.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
brooIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈbɹu
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
verb
transitiveintransitive
To make tea or coffee by mixing tea leaves or coffee beans with hot water.
transitiveintransitive
To make beer by steeping a starch source in water and fermenting the resulting sweet liquid with yeast.
transitiveintransitive
To make a hot soup by combining ingredients and boiling them in water.
intransitive
To attend to the business, or go through the processes, of brewing or making beer.
transitive
To heat wine, infusing it with spices; to mull.
intransitiveof an unwelcome event
To be in a state of preparation; to be mixing, forming, or gathering.
noun
A boiled concoction or mixture of liquids and other ingredients.
britishslang
A cup of tea.
The mixture formed by brewing; that which is brewed; a brewage, such as tea or beer.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B2 · Upper Intermediate (estimated)
- Frequency
- Moderately Common
- Typical Use
- Neutral / general English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: To make tea or coffee by mixing tea leaves or coffee beans with hot water.
Used this way, brew is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- No strong connotation
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use brew
- “People have been brewing beer for thousands of years.”verb
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
The production of malt beverages (as beer or ale) from malt and hops by grinding and boiling them and fermenting the result with yeast.
Someone who brews beer or ale from malt and hops and water.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
An alcoholic beverage (especially beer) made at home.
A fearsome mixture.
A fearsome mixture.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
A plant where beer is brewed by fermentation.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.