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Brenda

proper nouncommon in dialogue

  • //ˈbɹɛndə//

A female given name.

proper noun

  1. 1

    A female given name.

    We have already mentioned Minna and Brenda, the daughters of Magnus Troil. Their mother had been dead for many years, and they were now two beautiful girls

    'Brandi's father owns a number of radio stations across the country.' He smiled. 'Beware of women whose first names are potable.' 'I'll keep it in mind.' 'Actually, her real name is Brenda. She was named after Brenda Marshall, who was an actress in the forties. Apparently, my father-in-law was a huge fan.'

    Doga instructors are not required to complete certification, though teacher training seminars do exist, like ones taught by Brenda Bryan, 43, a yoga and doga instructor in Seattle who has just written a book on the subject.

  2. 2

    Queen Elizabeth II.

    There is a widespread belief that Brenda plays no part in politics. This is not entirely true. For instance, she has very strong feelings on Rhodesia.

    Windsor, I was always led to believe. But--as with license plates--they don't ever have to use it. Brenda just signs herself Elizabeth R (Regina).

    That is something that can never be removed entirely from anyone, the cold aloofness that is seen in the royal family is something that has been bred into them, but it doesn't take away their humanity at all. You only had to see the pictures of Brenda visiting the homeless hostel to know that she was bottling back tears.

    The problem isn't just Brenda, it is that there will never be agreement on what to replace her with. viz. the House of Lords debacle, the Australian Republican referendum.

  3. 3

    A former rural municipality of Manitoba.

Etymology

Possibly from Old Norse brandr (“sword”); by folk etymology seen as a feminine form of Brendan. Its use as a nickname for Queen Elizabeth II originated in Private Eye in reaction to a perceived attempt by the royals to appear less distant and upper class.

The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).