broche

Brooch descends from the Old French broche, meaning 'a pointed instrument' or 'a spit for roasting,' from the Latin brocca or broccus (projecting, pointed). The connection to jewelry is the pin: a brooch was originally any pointed fastener used to hold garments together. The fibula — the Roman safety-pin brooch — is one of the most common archaeological finds across the entire Roman Empire.

English split the word into two spellings in the fourteenth century. 'Broach' kept the original sense of piercing — to broach a barrel is to puncture it, to broach a topic is to open it. 'Brooch' specialized into the ornamental pin worn on clothing. Same word, same root, same idea of a pointed thing, but the spelling divergence hid the connection.

Viking brooches — massive penannular pins of silver and bronze — held cloaks at the shoulder and doubled as displays of wealth. The Tara Brooch, found in Ireland in 1850 and dating to around 700 CE, is one of the finest pieces of Insular art ever made. It is eight centimeters in diameter and covered in gold filigree, amber, and glass. The National Museum of Ireland keeps it behind glass. It was found on a beach.

The brooch declined as a garment fastener when buttons spread through European fashion in the 1300s. Without a functional role, it became purely decorative — the distinction between fastener and ornament is the entire history of the brooch in one sentence. Chanel pinned brooches onto tweed jackets in the 1920s. Madeleine Albright used brooches as diplomatic signals during her tenure as U.S. Secretary of State in the 1990s.