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brownie

nounattested in dialogue

  • United States//ˈbɹaʊni//

A small square piece of rich cake, usually made with chocolate.

noun

  1. 1

    A small square piece of rich cake, usually made with chocolate.

    Order for the brownie was placed but it took half an hour to prepare it.

    […]if she ever found out she was dying, she'd just eat brownies all day and night until the very end.

    Rona served Althea coffee with yellow milk curdling in the center, and a hunk of brownie, and Althea said, “Thanks so much.”

    On a Saturday afternoon, my wife bought her favorite treat for dessert that evening, a gourmet, nut-filled brownie.

  2. 2

    A sweet bread with brown sugar and currants.

    It was an amusing sight to see the three of us, each with a huge hunch of “browny” (bread sweetened with brown sugar and currants) in one hand, and a lump of ice in the other, for there was no water within reach.

    They rode quietly along to the stockman’s hut, gave their message, rested their horses for half-an-hour, and had some tea without milk, and a piece of cake made of flour, fat, and sugar, commonly known as [“]browny.”

    Four o’clock, “Smoke O!” again, and more tea and “brownie” (a bread sweetened with sugar and currants).

    Roast mutton and brownie are given us to eat, and with a billy of tea beside us we are comfortable enough, prisoners and all.

  3. 3

    A mythical creature, a helpful elf who would secretly do people's housework for them.

    Thus, offer Brownie a piece of bread, a cup of drink, or a new coat and hood, and he flouted at it, and perhaps, in his huff, quitted the place for ever ; but leave a nice bowl of cream, and some fresh honeycomb, in a snug private corner, and they soon disappeared, though Brownie, it was to be supposed, never knew any thing of them.

    "Oh, auntie, do you know what Stine says?" cried a little brown-eyed beauty; "she says I shall go with her into the hayloft to-night and give the brownie his Christmas porridge."

    [object Object]

    Stories were told of a brownie riding horseback to fetch the midwife at childbirth or helping his master to win at checkers.

  4. 4

    A copper coin, brown in colour; a penny, halfpenny, or cent.

    He rose and jingled in his pockets for change and drew out two brownies. He went and set one on each of Monroe’s eyes[.]

  5. 5

    A household spirit or revered ancestor.

  6. 6

    Any of various lycaenid butterflies of the Eurasian genus Miletus.

  7. 7

    informalA brown trout (Salmo trutta).

  8. 8

    informalA widow rockfish (Sebastes entomelas), a fish in the family Sebastidae.

    Depending upon the species, fishers may harvest along the ocean floor for many rockfish and other groundfish, while hake, pollock, and some rockfish species (i.e. greenies and brownies) are targeted with mid-water trawls.

  9. 9

    A tall, long-necked beer bottle, made from brown coloured glass.

  10. 10

    A person with brown skin.

  11. 11

    Variant of BrownieAlternative letter-case form of Brownie (“a girl in the first level of Girl Guides (US: Girl Scouts)”).

Etymology

From brown + -ie (diminutive suffix). In folkloric sense, originally Scots. For sense 7, compare with Dutch kabouter (“a very young female member of the scout movement”) (literally "gnome").

Forms

plural
brownies
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).