In other words, brooks are natural little mini-rivers. You might enjoy hiking through a forest and pausing by a brook to listen to it gurgle and watch it flow gently downhill.
"Brook" is a common word, lovely and often poetic. In 1975, Greg Kuzma wrote a poem called "The Brook." Listen to its beautiful beginning:
Look, how the brook flows.
Comes on in a sheet, bright white,
then rolls down green, spills
in the meadow flats.
Somewhere
back there,
it gives up speed,
comes down and slows,
grows tidy in its age,
and then particular about its rocks.
Check that out: the poem is even shaped like a brook, wiggling gently side to side, as if flowing around rocks! And it shows us how brooks are slow, gentle, beautiful, natural, and peaceful.
Now, the word "brook" has a homograph, which means that there's another word, "brook," with the same spelling but a totally different history and meaning. (That's what we mean by "homograph:" a word that's written, "-graph," exactly the same, "homos-," as another word.)
This other "brook" is a verb. When you brook things, you let them happen, and you put up with them, even though they're bad or annoying.
For example, in the show Futurama, people keep doing inappropriate things in Judge Glab's court, like bringing in new witnesses after she'd already made her ruling. It's weird! In a real court, the judge would never brook that kind of behavior. But Judge Glab brooks it. She keeps saying, "I'm going to allow this." Which is very funny.
That judge did brook outbursts and interruptions. But almost a hundred percent of the time, when we use the verb "brook," we talk about what people don't brook: what we won't brook, how we'll never brook this or that.
You could say that some person refuses to brook compromise, debate, questions, discussion, interference, rudeness, insults, hatred, violence, etc.
For example, in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy's new Watcher, Gwendolyn, is very strict. Gwendolyn says she won't "brook insolence or laziness," which means she won't allow Buffy to be insolent (rude) or lazy.
I should tell you that this verb "brook" is a bit rare and extremely formal. Most of the time, it's too formal, and you should pick a more common, more relaxed word that means the same thing, like "allow," "tolerate," "withstand," or "endure."
Make a flash card:
You can write your own definition and choose your own picture, or copy mine.
Term
Definition
Picture
brook
a small stream of natural water; or, to allow people to do certain things
Write your own sentence!
You can use either of the two ideas I'll suggest, or you can invent your own. Include as much detail as you can!
Remember: brooks are slow, gentle streams of water, and to brook bad behavior is to put up with it.
Idea 1: "I sat by the brook, listening to it babble, thinking about (something) and wondering if I would ever (do something)."
Idea 2: "My strictest (parent, grandparent, babysitter, teacher, or boss) always made me (do something) and never brooked (some kind of bad, silly, or lazy behavior)."
Enroll in "Make Your Point, Jr." for one-on-one tutoring.
