bride: [OE] Bride goes back via Old English bryd to Germanic *brūthiz, and has a wide range of relations in other Germanic languages (including German braut, Dutch bruid, and Swedish brud). All mean ‘woman being married’, so the word has shown remarkable semantic stability; but where it came from originally is not known. In modern English bridal is purely adjectival, but it originated in the Old English noun brydealu ‘wedding feast’, literally ‘bride ale’. [bride etymology, bride origin, 英语词源]