Brown Study.

Absence of mind; apparent thought, but real vacuity. The corresponding French expression explains it—sombre réverie. Sombre and brun both mean sad, melancholy, gloomy, dull.

“Invention flags, his brain grows muddy,

And black despair succeeds brown study.”

Congreve: An Impossible Thing.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.