Meaning
Now usually ironic: a new era, technology or social order presented as wonderful but regarded with suspicion or as unsettling; sometimes still used straight for exciting novelty. The sense has drifted twice, since Elizabethan 'brave' meant splendid rather than courageous, and Huxley's dystopian use fixed the mocking reading. Often tongue-in-cheek or sceptical about novelty; a straight, admiring use can sound naive. Regional use: General English (Shakespearean origin).
Origin
Miranda, who has grown up seeing almost no one but her father and Caliban, marvels at the shipwrecked courtiers in The Tempest, Act 5 Scene 1 (c. 1610-11): 'How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, / That has such people in't!' The Folger and RSC texts confirm the line and scene. Shakespeare wrote it with dramatic irony: the 'goodly creatures' include the usurper Antonio, and Prospero answers drily, ''Tis new to thee.' Aldous Huxley took the phrase as the title of his 1932 novel (written 1931), in which John the Savage repeats it with mounting bitterness, and that allusion pushed the phrase into everyday English as shorthand for technological or social upheaval viewed askance.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- a brave new world
- O brave new world
- this brave new world
- welcome to the brave new world
Usage Examples
- Every app now ships its own AI assistant; welcome to the brave new world of customer service.
- The council promises a brave new world of sensor-managed parking, and drivers are braced for chaos.
- Her grandparents still describe contactless payment as a brave new world.