an ornament worn on the wrist, much used among the ancients; it was made of different materials, and in different fashions, according to the age and quality of the wearer. The word is French, bracelet; which Menage derives further from braceletum, a diminutive of bracile, a word occurring in writers of the Justinian age; all formed from the Latin brachium, arm. It amounts to the same with what was called by the ancients armilla, brachialis, occabas; in the middle age, boga, bauga, armipatha.

Bracelets are much worn by the savages of Africa, who are so excessively fond of them, as to give the richest commodities, and even their fathers, wives, and children, in exchange for those made of no richer materials than shells, glass-beads, and the like.

They form also, in modern civilized countries, a very common part of the ornaments of the ladies.