🎨 A hand roller 🐴 A loud crier

brayer

9.5

A hand tool with a round rubber roller for spreading ink in printing

noun
/ˈbrɛɪər/

Specialized

: rodillo

To create a smooth print, use a brayer to evenly distribute the ink across the plate.
roll the brayer
small brayers
using the brayer

Examples

This is called a brayer, but it doesn't work if it's broken.
I'm just using a little rubber brayer and then I will glue it together on a flat table.
I'll turn the table on, heat it up, extract all of the air, and then use my balsa brayer to run over the painting.
The printmaker lifted his brayer to begin rolling ink onto the textured surface.
Before starting, make sure to clean your brayer to avoid mixing colors.

Synonyms

paint roller

vsbrayer

1 2.3

A tool with a soft round surface for painting large walls or ceilings

is smaller in scale and suited to printmaking, not for large surfaces

Surface Forms

brayer singular

brayers plural

Morphology

brayer = bray (opaque) = bray + er

The instrument sense comes from a less familiar sense of 'bray' meaning to rub or beat rather than the common 'donkey cry', so learners are unlikely to derive the meaning.

Etymology

Brayer for the hand roller comes from an old word bray meaning 'to rub' or 'to crush', so a brayer is the tool that rubs or rolls ink smoothly across a plate.