When’s the last time you heard the word brangle?
“Since when are we using British archaic words in big honkin Metro headlines?”
That email question from a St. Louis Post-Dispatch staffer greeted me this morning. More significantly, several readers called us to complain that they weren’t familiar with the word brangle that appeared in the lead headline on the front of Wednesday’s Metro section. And they couldn’t find it in their dictionaries at home.
“O’Fallon, Mo., officials brangle anew.”
Sure enough, brangle doesn’t appear in the aged Webster’s New World Dictionary on my desk. Since Dictionary.com lists it as “British archaic,” it seems unlikely to make a revival in U.S. dictionaries — unless copy editors across the country conspire to campaign for common usage.
Dictionary.com defines brangle:
-noun 1. a squabble.
-verb (used without object) 2. to dispute in a noisy or angry manner; squabble.
Origin: 1545-55; perh. var. of branle
I’ll check with staffers who worked Tuesday evening to see what, if any, discussion ensued when the headline was suggested. Typically, a copy editor writes a headline, another copy editor designated as the slot approves it, and a news editor proofs headlines on page copies before they are sent to press. So, most likely, at least three people had an opportunity to suggest a more common word than brangle.
UPDATE: The night city editor last evening saw the word on a page proof, didn’t recognize it and failed to find it in two dictionaries. She then questioned the Copy Desk slot, who defined it but told the night city editor to feel free to change it. Turns out things were hectic in the newsroom — many production challenges that threatened making deadlines — and the word was changed on an inside page jump headline but not on the section front.
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Steve Parker is the deputy managing editor for news, and oversees the Post-Dispatch's front page. STLtoday's online news editors are on his newsroom team. Parker has been at the paper since September 1980. 
I enjoyed it actually, I didn’t know what it meant so I Googled it, I think it is part of a newspapers job to educate and get their customers to thinking. I learned something by looking the word up.
I think it’s serendipitous that it’s actually a real word, but you’re still gonna have to convince me that somebody didn’t just mistype “wrangle.”
I probably heard the word `supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ more recently. Or heard someone utter the words ‘Papa Smurf.’ There’s nothing wrong with using a word like that. If people don’t know what it means, they can look it up. Yet this is exactly the type of thing that did in Dennis Miller as one of the hosts on `Monday Night Football.’ Well, also the fact that sports bars didn’t want to give up a corner of their establishments to a dictionary on a stand. So watch out: the hoi polloi might want that headline writer’s head over this.
After Googling brangle, I found it has taken on a new meaning:A cross between a bracelet and a bangle. I thought a bangle was a type of bracelet? I’ve never heard brangle in the sense used here.
*shrug* I got it from context. Why reduce everything to a third-grade reading level? Readers should take it upon themselves to be informed.
I’m really more miffed at the abbreviation of Missouri. When I was in my early high school days (early 1970s) we went to two-letters, all capitals, no period, state abbreviation.
It’s in the OED four times. Two are marked obsolete. One is marked obsolete except for dialect. One is marked obsolete or archaic. As a noun, it can mean a shake, an impulse, or a dance, or (here is the dialect) a brawl or a state of confusion. As a verb, it can mean to shake, to brandish, to wag (the head, to shake (in mind); to wrangle, squabble, dispute contentiously. The compilers note on that last one that it might be influenced by wrangle.
I thought the headline writer simply meant wrangle and perhaps had always heard the word with a “b.” Otherwise, maybe he speaks a dialect of English. I would have changed it to wrangle, on the theory that anything that makes a reader stop and go back over something is undesirable in news columns. However, I have no objection to learning a new word. I like this kind of stuff.
When I saw this headline I checked my Webster’s Dictionary for “brangle” and it wasn’t there. So I cut out the article, thinking I’d send it to Jay Leno and The Tonight Show Headlines.
I could imagine Jay asking these officials to stop “brangling” and get back to work!
As a last thought I decided to Google it and lo and behold, there was “brangle,” aka “squabble.”
Staff writer Joel Currier, who wrote the story, e-mailed me back that it was a new word for him too.
You live and learn.
To those who say it’s fine and there is nothing wrong with introducing unfamiliar words, I counter that the headline’s main job is to communicate, and the Anglo-Saxon word should be chosen over the Latin if nothing is lost in meaning. So surely the key here is to pick the most widely understood word. Brangle is not one of those words. It’s called showing off, I believe.
As the copy editor who chose the word “brangle” for the headline over the story about O’Fallon, Mo., officials, I’m thrilled to hear people discussing my choice.
I’m happy to outline for you the reasons why I chose it. There are several:
First, and most importantly, it conveys exactly the degree of contentiousness without actual violence, among the public officials in the story.
I first considered the word “wrangle,” which means “to quarrel angrily and noisily; to argue, dispute” (Webster’s New World College Dictionary, 4th ed.). I then thought of “brangle,” which is defined in our Webster’s unabridged dictionary (2nd ed.) as “to dispute contentiously; to squabble.” The word “squabble” would also have been acceptable, but not quite angry enough, with a connotation of fighting over something petty (”to quarrel noisily over a small matter; wrangle”). The issues in the story aren’t petty.
Second in consideration in writing any headline is space. I needed to identify the location (O’Fallon, Mo.) and the people (officials); indicate that the situation is a new aspect to a previous problem (anew); and say what was happening (the verb). Of the verbs that were accurate and would fit, I chose “brangle.” Why?
Because, third, I love words, especially the many and varied words of the English language, and I hadn’t used that word in a while. It bubbled to the surface, it was exactly apt, and it fit the space! The word “clash” would have worked; or “quarrel”; or “fight”; or “argue.” But using the same words day after day gets tiresome and also limits our range of expression.
You might think of it as using only the word “red” in every instance of that color, though English has words that can describe varied hues and conditions — crimson, scarlet, rose, pink, rosy, flushed, florid, blushing, bloodshot, reddened. … We are lucky to have so many sources for words, and thus so many ways to express nuances of experiences and events. English is a living, growing language — and better for it.