big brother

English

Pronunciation

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Noun

big brother (plural big brothers)

  1. (often childish) A sibling's older brother.
    If you don't give me back my toys I'll tell my big brother!
  2. (figurative) Something that is bigger in comparison.
    • 2019 October, Roger Ford, “WCP award - victory for DfT reactionaries”, in Modern Railways, page 32:
      While the little MTU Vee-12s in the Class 800 bi-mode generating units have lower overall emissions than their big brothers in the Class 43 IC125 power cars, in the case of CO₂, when you burn a litre of diesel fuel you get 2.8kg of CO₂. [a possible error in the original text]
  3. (figurative) early mobile phones (in China)
    • 2018 December, “Chinese Terminology: Big Brother”, in CGTN‎[1]:
      Due to the size of Big Brother and the fact that people who used it were mostly big brothers in the business world, this thing quickly became a status symbol.
  4. Alternative form of Big Brother.

Translations

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References

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