Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Wiktionary
n. 1 (context chiefly US English) Originally, a group of experts who advise a government, often informally. 2 More recently, any group of experts assembled to give advice.
Wikipedia
Brain trust began as a term for a group of close advisers to a political candidate or incumbent, prized for their expertise in particular fields. The term is most associated with the group of advisers to Franklin Roosevelt during his presidential administration. More recently the use of the term has expanded to encompass any group of advisers to a decision maker, whether or not in politics.
The term brains trust (originally plural, the s is now usually dropped in the United States) may refer to:
- Brain Trust, a close group of advisors, including those who advised United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
- The Brains Trust, a British radio/television programme
- Brain Trust (GetBackers), a secret organization from the anime/manga GetBackers
- Brain Trust (Wild Cards), a character from the book series Wild Cards
- Brain Trust, a group in the Scrubs (TV series)
- Brain Trust, line by character Pappy O'Daniel, Governor in movie O Brother Where Art Though
- Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us about Morality, a book by Patricia Churchland
- Brain Research Trust, a British medical research charity
- 'Brain Trust', A TV pilot produced by Dean Devlin (Leverage, Independence Day) and starring DB Sweeney.
Usage examples of "brain trust".
Bane's uncommon brain trust drew from such divergent American loci as Hollywood, Detroit and New York.
This is another likely reason why Carter's brain trust is not especially concerned with how to put the Law Day speech to good use: the people most likely to be impressed or even converted by it are mainly the ones who make up the left/liberal, humanist/intellectual wing of the Democratic party and the national press -- and in the wake of Carter's genuinely awesome blitzkrieg in Pennsylvania and Texas, destroying all of his remaining opposition in less than a week, it is hard to argue with the feeling among his staff-command technicians that he no longer needs any converts from the .
But even now, after Caddell arranged to dub 50 tape copies off of my copy, nobody in Carter's brain trust has figured out what to do with them.
She's the fulcrum to snitch the whole brain trust, she's a virgin as far as grand juries go, breaking her would demoralize all those sad excuses for men in love with her.
Julian Broadhurst was a tall, distinguished man in his mid-forties, a strong supporter of the Fabian Society, which was the intellectual brain trust of the socialist movement.
His destination was the sinister hacienda of the twentieth-century American millionaire, John Augustus Owens, now the headquarters of the Mayan brain trust.