Brace Yourselves!

I couldn't watch the Man Utd match so I had to do the next best thing. When I woke up this morning, I went online to read soccer news.

Hurray.

Once again, my team had won.

I was more interested in the headline. It read: "Berbatov Brace Puts United Back on Top".

See the pic below.

Anyhow, I was befuddled for a moment. I knew what a hat-trick was, but I was lost as to the meaning of "brace". And naturally, the phrase "scored a brace" was lost on me. However, as is often the case, the meaning can be inferred through reading the context, and a quick read revealed that Berbatov had scored twice in the match.

Being interested in the phrase, I did some google searches. The results:

There are 2 million hits on the phrase for a google.com search. I was not satisfied since I never heard of the word or phrase being used before. So, trying a google.com.sg search returned only 3 thousand hits:

In fact, most of the Singaporean results indicated some other form of mechanical device/aid, rather than an abstract noun. (phew, i wasn't alone)

Wondering where such a phrase came from, I headed straight to the OED. AH HAH! There it was, right down at sense number 15.

Brace simply means "a pair". Curiously, the phrase was initially "bag a brace" and was used only in cricket but it was denigrative sense, since it meant that the player scored a nought for both innings of a match.

But there was a shift in meaning to accommodate an amelioration of the sense. In the context of soccer/football today, the phrase "bag/score a brace" and the word "brace" have become synonymous with "score a double" or "double", respectively.

I'm pretty sure that both the word and phrase have now found a new-found significance in my own vocab store. Hurray for learning something new each day.