Brazes

Part of speech: verb, noun

Definitions

1. To join two pieces of metal by melting a filler metal with a lower melting point than that of the metals being joined
2. To create a strong bond between metal components by heating and applying a non-ferrous filler metal
3. This process involves using heat to fuse metals while maintaining the integrity of the base metals without melting them

Etymology: "Brazes" is the third-person singular present form of "braze", a verb meaning to join metal pieces with a filler metal melted at a temperature below that of the metals themselves. The verb has two separate lines of descent that were eventually confused. The older one comes from Old English "bræsian", meaning to cover with brass, built from "bræs", the word for brass. Middle English kept this sense of coating a surface with brass, which is why the English word is tied to a specific alloy. The 1580s sense of exposing something to fire, though, has a different and murkier origin. It may come from French "braser", meaning to solder or weld, but that meaning is hard to connect with the earlier one. Another proposal is that English borrowed the word from Old French "braser", meaning to burn, which in turn came from Old Norse "brasa", meaning to harden with fire. This fits the sense of heating more closely, though the direct evidence is thin.