Brace

1. n. The mouth of a shaft.
2. n. That which holds anything tightly or supports it firmly; a bandage or a prop.
3. n. A cord, ligament, or rod, for producing or maintaining tension, as a cord on the side of a drum.
4. n. The state of being braced or tight; tension.
5. n. A piece of material used to transmit, or change the direction of, weight or pressure; any one of the pieces, in a frame or truss, which divide the structure into triangular parts. It may act as a tie, or as a strut, and serves to prevent distortion of the structure, and transverse strains in its members. A boiler brace is a diagonal stay, connecting the head with the shell.
6. n. A vertical curved line connecting two or more words or lines, which are to be taken together; thus, boll, bowl; or, in music, used to connect staves.
7. n. A rope reeved through a block at the end of a yard, by which the yard is moved horizontally; also, a rudder gudgeon.
8. n. A curved instrument or handle of iron or wood, for holding and turning bits, etc.; a bitstock.
9. n. A pair; a couple; as, a brace of ducks; now rarely applied to persons, except familiarly or with some contempt.
10. n. Straps or bands to sustain trousers; suspenders.
11. 1n. 1 The mouth of a shaft.
12. 1n. 1 That which holds anything tightly or supports it firmly; a bandage or a prop.

The word meanings were obtained from OPTED(The Online Plain Text English Dictionary), which is based on “The Project Gutenberg Etext of Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary” which is in turn based on the 1913 US Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary (See Project Gutenburg), as a text file.