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Branks   Listen
noun
Branks, Brank  n.  
1.
A sort of bridle with wooden side pieces. (Scot. & Prov. Eng.)
2.
A scolding bridle, an instrument formerly used for correcting scolding women. It was an iron frame surrounding the head and having a triangular piece entering the mouth of the scold.





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Branks" Quotes from Famous Books



... many, as we have good reason to conclude, were insane or hystero-epileptics. In the church steeple at Forfar one was preserved, within recent times, with the date 1661.[55] Archdeacon Hale many years ago suggested that the "brank" was used to check noisy lunatics of the female sex; and in reference to this, Dr. Brushfield remarks: "Medical officers of asylums can always point out many female patients who, if they had been living a couple of centuries back, would undoubtedly have been branked ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke


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