BRE in Serbian

Nobody knows for sure where did we get this word from. There are some, completely different theories, and each of them is so interesting, that we just can’t decide which one to believe in.

• According to the first theory, BRE comes from the ancient Greek language, and it is closely related to the word MORE (not with a long ’o’, like in the Serbian word for the sea, but with a short vowel) – none of them can be easily translated, but their meaning is very close to ’hey you, hey man’. The story starts with the Greek word μωρός, more precisely its form μορέ (moré). Initially, it was used with the meaning ’stupid, foolish, feeble-minded person’, but later it lost this negative connotation. Most likely BRE came to Serbian language through Turkish, as Turkish language treats it as a loan word from Greek. This would explain the presence of BRE (or even BE) in Macedonian, Bulgarian, Modern Greek, Albanian, Romanian, and some Turkish dialects.
• Another interpretation is that BRE is just a shorter version of ’brate’ (Serbian word for ’brother’ in Vocative case). Apparently, this is the same way as ’brother’ became ’bro’ in English slang.
• The most recent theory says that BRE originates from the Ladino language (spoken by Sephardi Jews in Spain). In the 16th century, they ran away from Spain and many of them settled in Belgrade. They built a large Jewish community in the Serbian capital over the years. The word ’hombre’ (Spanish for ’man’) was heard very often among them, that might have led local people to shorten it to ’bre’.