brains

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of brain.

   Researchers mapped the brains of dozens of volunteers during the trial.

   Injuries to developing brains can affect a child for life.

   Note

   The ordinary countable plural, for when there is more than one organ to count: the brains of mice, two brains compared side by side. A number can stand in front of it here (three brains). The same spelling also serves as a mass noun for intelligence, as in the "intelligence" meaning, and as a present-tense verb form, where counting makes no sense.

2. 2
   nouncolloquialplural

   Intelligence or mental ability, pictured as the substance a brain is made of.

   He clearly has the brains for advanced math, but he needs more discipline.

   Winning that scholarship took brains and a lot of late nights.

   Similarintelligence, smarts, wits, intellect, nous

   Oppositebrawn, stupidity

   Note

   Plural in form but naming a single quality: you have brains, or you lack them. The singular a brain points elsewhere, to an intelligent person rather than the quality itself. It sits naturally in contrasts with looks, as in got my brains from my mom and my looks from the mailman, and in phrases like the brains for math. It is informal; in careful prose, intelligence does the same job.

3. 3
   nouncolloquialpluralwith the

   The intelligent person or people who direct and plan a group's actions, such as the organizer or strategist.

   Detectives finally caught the brains behind the string of robberies.

   She may stay in the background, but she's the brains of the operation.

   Similarmastermind, architect, planner, organizer, strategist

   Note

   Always used with the, and it can name a single person despite its plural shape. In Edgar Rice Burroughs's The Return of Tarzan (1913), one man tells another, "You are supposed to be the brains of this partnership." The usual frames are the brains behind a scheme and the brains of an outfit, and the second is still in use in House of Cards (1990).

4. 4
   nounplural

   The soft tissue of an animal's brain, treated as a material or prepared as food.

   Calf brains, breaded and fried, were once a common restaurant offering.

   The butcher set aside pork brains for customers who requested them.

   Note

   A mass plural: when the tissue is meant, a single skull still holds brains, not a brain. Shakespeare's Macbeth (c. 1606) uses the violent phrase dash the brains out, and that image lies behind the verb meaning to strike the head. On a menu the word takes plural agreement, so you write the brains are fried, not the brains is.

5. 5
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of brain.

   In the climax, the hero brains the monster with a fallen branch.

   Whenever a wasp gets indoors, she brains it with a rolled-up magazine.

   Note

   The verb form shares its spelling with the noun plural, so the sentence tells you which one you have. In she brains the wasp, it is a verb because an object follows it. Its usual meanings are transitive and violent: striking someone on the head, or, figuratively, putting an end to something. The old meaning "to conceive in the mind" is obsolete, and a humorous intransitive "to think" is nonstandard.

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