brood

noun

1. a number of young produced or hatched at one time; a family of offspring or young.
2. a breed, species, group, or kind: The museum exhibited a brood of monumental sculptures.

verb (used with object)

3. to sit upon (eggs) to hatch, as a bird; incubate.
4. (of a bird) to warm, protect, or cover (young) with the wings or body.
5. to think or worry persistently or moodily about; ponder: He brooded the problem.

verb (used without object)

6. to sit upon eggs to be hatched, as a bird.
7. to dwell on a subject or to meditate with morbid persistence (usually followed by over or on).

adjective

8. kept for breeding: a brood hen.

Verb Phrases

9. brood above/over, to cover, loom, or seem to fill the atmosphere or scene: The haunted house on the hill brooded above the village.

noun

1. a number of young animals, esp birds, produced at one hatching
2. all the offspring in one family: often used jokingly or contemptuously
3. a group of a particular kind; breed
4. (as modifier) kept for breedinga brood mare

verb

5. (of a bird)
   1. to sit on or hatch (eggs)
   2. (tr)to cover (young birds) protectively with the wings
6. (when intr , often foll by on, over or upon) to ponder morbidly or persistently

n.

Old English brod “brood, fetus, hatchling,” from Proto-Germanic *brod (cf. Middle Dutch broet, Old High German bruot, German Brut “brood”), literally “that which is hatched by heat,” from *bro- “to warm, heat,” from PIE *bhre- “burn, heat, incubate,” from root *bhreue- “to boil, bubble, effervesce, burn” (see brew (v.)).

v.

“sit on eggs, hatch,” mid-15c., from brood (n.). The figurative meaning (“to incubate in the mind”) is first recorded 1570s, from notion of “nursing” one’s anger, resentment, etc. Related: Brooded; brooding.

n.

1. litter