BRICKBAT

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does brickbat mean? 

• BRICKBAT (noun)
  The noun BRICKBAT has 2 senses:

1. a fragment of brick used as a weapon

2. blunt criticism

  Familiarity information: BRICKBAT used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• BRICKBAT (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A fragment of brick used as a weapon

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural objects (not man-made)

Hypernyms ("brickbat" is a kind of...):

fragment (a piece broken off or cut off of something else)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Blunt criticism

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Hypernyms ("brickbat" is a kind of...):

criticism; unfavorable judgment (disapproval expressed by pointing out faults or shortcomings)

 Context examples 

“The thing hasn't took quite the turn that might have been expected, for the old Scholar—what an excellent man!—is as blind as a brickbat; but this family's out of the cart, I think!”

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

You talked of expected horrors in London—and instead of instantly conceiving, as any rational creature would have done, that such words could relate only to a circulating library, she immediately pictured to herself a mob of three thousand men assembling in St. George's Fields, the Bank attacked, the Tower threatened, the streets of London flowing with blood, a detachment of the Twelfth Light Dragoons (the hopes of the nation) called up from Northampton to quell the insurgents, and the gallant Captain Frederick Tilney, in the moment of charging at the head of his troop, knocked off his horse by a brickbat from an upper window.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)