Et Tu, Brute?

We wondered whether "brutal" came from Brutus, of Julius Caesar fame. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (which you can access with your KCLS library cards here!), "brutal" comes from the Latin brutus and was first used in English around 1500, but the noun and adjective "brute" shows up earlier, in 1475.  I can't find any evidence that English uses brutal because of Brutus's name, but the connection is exactly the sort of meaningful connotative observation that AP scholars should make. ;-)

And be careful! The OED is a very dangerous place for a logophile to get lost.