Hello, you have come here looking for the meaning of the word besom. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word besom, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say besom in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word besom you have here. The definition of the word besom will help you to be more precise and correct when speaking or writing your texts. Knowing the definition ofbesom, as well as those of other words, enriches your vocabulary and provides you with more and better linguistic resources.
As a kid I went to the Russian Bath with my own father. … Down in the cellar men moaned on the steam-softened planks while they were massaged abrasively with oak-leaf besoms lathered in pickle buckets.
1903, Samuel Rutherford Crockett, The Dark O' the Moon: A Novel, page 130:
"Eh, but she was a besom, if a' tales be true !"
1917, A.S. Neill., A Dominie Dismissed, page 10:
Janet's eyes began to look dim, and I had to frown at her very hard; then I had to turn my frown on Jean ... and Janet, the besom, took advantage of my divided attention.
1963, Margaret McLean MacPherson, The Shinty Boys, page 187:
Uncle Angus went on about the behavior of the car. "She's a besom, a proper besom, her and her gears. She'll be the death of me yet one of these days."
2013, Nora Kay, Best Friends:
"She's a besom but no' bad at times, like now," Agnes said as she bit into a dough-ring.
1851, “A Few Words about War and the Peace Congress.”, in Littell’s Living Age, volume 28, page 364:
"The march of an army through a conquered country supposing it to be a highly civilized one, is a besom of destruction, whose havoc, moral and material, it would take at least a century to recover."
Now, in her iceberg-white, holily laundered crinoline nightgown, under virtuous polar sheets, in her spruced and scoured dust-defying bedroom in trig and trim Bay View, a house for paying guests at the top of the town, Mrs Ogmore-Prichard widow, twice, of Mr Ogmore, linolium, retired, and Mr Prichard, failed bookmaker, who maddened by besoming, swabbing and scrubbing, the voice of the vacuum-cleaner and the fume of polish, ironically swallowed disinfectant...
1927, “ZONG OF TWI MAARKEET MOANS”, in THE ANCIENT DIALECT OF THE BARONIES OF FORTH AND BARGY, COUNTY WEXFORD, page 129, line 5:
Thick besom fighed a spagh wi kick an a blaake,
The kid angry gave a struggle, with a kick and a bleat,
References
Kathleen A. Browne (1927) The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland Sixth Series, Vol.17 No.2, Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, page 129
