brain

[[t]bre͟ɪn[/t]]

♦♦

brains, braining, brained

1) N-COUNT Your brain is the organ inside your head that controls your body's activities and enables you to think and to feel things such as heat and pain.

Her father died of a brain tumour.

2) N-COUNT: usu poss N Your brain is your mind and the way that you think.

Once you stop using your brain you soon go stale...

Stretch your brain with this puzzle.

Syn:

mind, intellect

3) N-COUNT If someone has brains or a good brain, they have the ability to learn and understand things quickly, to solve problems, and to make good decisions.

They were not the only ones to have brains and ambition...

I had a good brain and the teachers liked me.

4) N-COUNT: usu pl, the N behind/of n If someone is the brains behind an idea or an organization, he or she had that idea or makes the important decisions about how that organization is managed. [INFORMAL]

Mr White was the brains behind the scheme...

Some investigators regarded her as the brains of the gang.

5) VERB To brain someone means to hit them forcefully on the head. [INFORMAL]

[V n] He had threatened to brain him then and there.

6) PHRASE: V inflects To beat someone's brains out or bash their brains in means to hit their head very hard, so that they are badly injured or killed. [INFORMAL]

They stood over him with clubs raised as if to beat his brains out.

7) PHRASE: V inflects To blow someone's brains out means to shoot them in the head, killing them. [INFORMAL]

Give me all your money or I'll blow your brains out...

He blew his brains out with a shotgun.

8) PHRASE: V inflects If someone has something on the brain, they keep thinking about it. [INFORMAL]

You've had chess on the brain since you were little.

9) PHRASE: V inflects If you pick someone's brains, you ask them to help you with a problem because they know more about the subject than you. [INFORMAL]

Why should a successful company allow another firm to pick its brains?

10) to rack your brains → see rack