brand new

Origin: From , implying something that is newly forged (first citation 1570; compare fire-new). Alternatively, and less likely from brand as in a branding iron (i.e. newly-branded). The first element of the variant bran new, with the post nasal stop deletion common to English (compare the common pronunciation (outside Britain) of hunting as hunning ), is often back-etymologized as being from bran as if from cases where new items were supposedly “packaged up with unwanted grain (bran) in the 18th century to protect the objects during transit” (source unknown). Both variants are well attested. Origin information sourced from Wiktionary contributors (CC BY-SA 4.0).