# Brand new? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [March 11, 2005, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brand-new/293938 "2005-03-11T00:45:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![mangeorge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d78d45/32.png) [@mangeorge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mangeorge)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2005, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brand-new/293938/1 "2005-03-11T00:45:10Z")
In Cecil’s answer to the question about the origin of the term “brand new” he claims, with cites, that the term has something to do with cattle. Yeah, right! And he has some other obscure ideas. Actually the exact term “brand new”, and it’s modern usage, are fairly recent and began with goods that had labels affixed to them in a non-permanent manner such as glued paper. So when the item was first brought home it still had the brand on it. But after a short time and a couple washings the brand was gone, and the item no longer “brand new”. Yeah, that’s it. Peace, mangeorge ---
**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2005, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brand-new/293938/2 "2005-03-11T01:02:16Z")
> [@mangeorge](#): > > In Cecil’s answer to the question about the origin of the term “brand new” he claims, with cites, that the term has something to do with cattle. If you take the time to actually read [What’s the origin of “brand-new”?](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_235.html), you will see that he says no such thing. > [@mangeorge](#): > > Actually the exact term “brand new”, and it’s modern usage, are fairly recent and began with goods that had labels affixed to them in a non-permanent manner such as glued paper. > So when the item was first brought home it still had the brand on it. But after a short time and a couple washings the brand was gone, and the item no longer “brand new”. Evidence? ---
**Author:** ![mangeorge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d78d45/32.png) [@mangeorge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mangeorge)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2005, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brand-new/293938/3 "2005-03-11T01:23:26Z")
Dang, I forgot to [link](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_235.html) to the question in question before adding my _comments_. Sorry. Thanks, **John W. Kennedy** , for picking up my slack. Anyway, Cecil has quite a lot to say about “spanking”, but little about the _exact_ (as I stated in my reply) phrase “brand new”. Evidence? Why, Tribal Knowledge, of course. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2005, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brand-new/293938/4 "2005-03-11T04:27:26Z")
I think **Mangeorge** was kidding, but you can never tell 'round these parts. Anyway, brand new began long before labels. [The Maven’s Word of the Day](http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19971010) > [@](#): > > While it’s not directly related to the branding of livestock, brand-new meaning ‘entirely new’ comes from the same general concept. > > The original sense of brand is ‘a burning piece of wood in or just taken from a fire’; other senses (e.g., ‘a mark made by burning with a hot iron’; ‘an identifying mark (of any sort)’; and ‘a distinctive kind, class, etc.’) all derive from this. > > The expression brand-new literally means ‘new as if fresh from the fire’. It is first found in the late sixteenth century. A semantically similar expression is fire-new, which is found in Shakespeare (“Your fire-new stamp of honor is scarce current”–Richard III) and elsewhere from the sixteenth century onwards. > > The spelling bran-new is surprisingly common; it is recorded as early as 1715 in the works of the playwright John Gay and pops up frequently thereafter (“He adjusted his hat upon his head with as much care, real or pretended, as if it were a bran-new one of the most expensive quality”–Dickens, Nicholas Nickelby (1839); “We got an old tin lantern, and a butcher-knife without any handle, and a bran-new Barlow knife worth two bits in any store, and…”–Twain, Huckleberry Finn (1884)). It is, however, now generally regarded as an error. The spelling is a folk-etymology that arises from the pronunciation; the -d- in brand-new is not really pronounced, and the origin of brand isn’t clear, so we see bran-new. A similar phenomenon leads to ice cream or ice tea: the -d in iced isn’t pronounced and gets dropped. > > Since someone is bound to ask about the phrase brand spanking new: This spanking, which is of uncertain though possibly Scandinavian origin, is a seventeenth-century word with such meanings as ‘quick; vigorous’; ‘unusually fine, large, striking, etc.’; and as an adverb ‘exceptionally; strikingly’. There is also a much earlier (thirteenth-century) expression span-new (also, in combination with our phrase, brand-span-new), where this span is a word of Old Norse origin meaning ‘a chip of wood’; span-new is now chiefly dialectal. ---
**Author:** ![mangeorge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d78d45/32.png) [@mangeorge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mangeorge)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2005, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brand-new/293938/5 "2005-03-11T04:45:12Z")
Aw, shucks. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brand-new/293938/6 "2005-03-14T17:58:44Z")
Don’t feel bad, **mangeorge**. In a potentially foolhardy move Cecil used one of Charles Funk’s books as a reference. I don’t have any in my possession at the moment so I cannot point to specific examples but I was shocked to find that he was the Funk of “Look that up in your _Funk & Wagnell’s_” because, from the number of word origins he seemed to pull out of his ass like the a member of the Teeming Millions Cecil so loves to slap down, I thought he was just somebody’s Grandpa Charlie who had taken up a new hobby after retiring. The random organization of his books would never indicate he had spent many decades alphabetizing, either.