Browse and brows are two words that are pronounced in the same manner but are spelled differently and have different meanings, which makes them homophones. We will examine the definitions of browse and brows, where these words came from and atoms examples of their use in sentences.
Browse means to examine something or look something over in a casual manner. Browse may refer to shopping in a market or store with no particular goal in mind or to read something superficially in order to get a general impression of the material. Browse may also refer to an animal feeding on grass, leaves or twigs in an unhurried fashion. Browse may be used as a noun but is most frequently used as an intransitive verb, which is a verb that does not take an object. Related words are browses, browsed, browsing, browser. The word browser has come to mean a computer program that is used to navigate the internet. The word browse is derived from the Old French word broster which means to feed on grass, leaves or twigs.
Brows is the plural form of brow, which may mean either a person’s forehead or an eyebrow. The eyebrow evolved to prevent dust and dirt from falling into one’s eye, but it has become a focal point of beauty, especially for women. Through the ages, brows have been plucked with tweezers, shaved, waxed, threaded, contoured, pigmented, gelled, stenciled, slicked with pomade or filled in with eyebrow pencil in the quest for the perfect eyebrow. Much of a person’s facial expression may be attributed to the placement of the eyebrows. The word brow is also used figuratively to mean the highest point of a summit, the gangway between the shore and a ship or an architectural feature. Brow is derived from the Old English word bru which means eyebrow or eyelash.
Examples
Students in Denmark have created a way for web users to browse the internet even when they don’t have a screen – a landline phone that reads out the contents of web pages. (The Irish News)
High deer populations hamper the growth of this medicinal root, and each September I discover heavily browsed plants. (The Indiana Gazette)
This year, everybody has gotten creative with their eyebrows — from barbed wire and ombre brows to feather brows and even brow carving. (Good Housekeeping Magazine)