Hello, you have come here looking for the meaning of the word weed. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word weed, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say weed in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word weed you have here. The definition of the word weed will help you to be more precise and correct when speaking or writing your texts. Knowing the definition ofweed, as well as those of other words, enriches your vocabulary and provides you with more and better linguistic resources.
The hovel stood in the centre of what had once been a vegetable garden, but was now a patch of rank weeds. Surrounding this, almost like a zareba, was an irregular ring of gorse and brambles, an unclaimed vestige of the original common.
1944, Oregon. Agricultural experiment station, Circular of Information - Issues 323-395, page 3:
Some of the weeds that cause an undesirable flavor in milk are: onion, tarweed, scaleweed, garlic, mustard, pepper grass.
1993, John Banville, Ghosts:
I found down at the side of the house the remains of what must have once been a kitchen garden. Everything was choked with weeds and scutch grass, but the outlines of bed and drill were still there.
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
weed (third-person singular simple presentweeds, present participleweeding, simple past and past participleweeded)
(transitive) To remove unwanted vegetation from a cultivated area (especially grass).
I weeded my flower bed.
1764, Duhamel du Monceau, translated by Philip Miller, The Elements of Agriculture, volume 1, page 265:
If these plants are young, the weeders do not see them; and in this case, when they grow larger, the land must be again weeded. But the small plants, which are not less prejudicial, such as the wild Fitch, the wild Oat, Darnel, Fennel-flower, Knot-grass, Restharrow, Fox-tail, the several sorts of Bindweed, (Convolvulus) and all the small Poppies, remain in the field.
2017 December 17, Kee B. Park, “Amid Talk of Nuclear Weapons, North Koreans Go Hungry”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on December 18, 2017, Opinion:
One cool morning last April in Pyongyang, North Korea, I watched a woman squat over a patch of grass along the Daedong River. A large handkerchief covering her head was knotted below her chin, encircling her sunburned and wrinkled face. As a van passed by blaring patriotic hymns from the oversize speakers on its roof, she weeded the riverbank. In North Korea, keeping the neighborhood clean is a civic duty. But she was far from any neighborhood. She was gathering the weeds for food.
She now regretted much having had the case taken to the duke's, for surely it might have been weeded to very good purpose, and no one the wiser.
(library science,transitive) To systematically remove materials from a library collection based on a set of criteria.
We usually weed romance novels that haven't circulated in over a year.
2003, Juris Dilevko, Lisa Gottlieb, “Weed to achieve: a fundamental part of the public library mission?”, in Library Collections, Acquisitions, and Technical Services, volume 27, number 1, →DOI, page 73:
Librarians overwhelmingly believe that weeding increases use of books and patron satisfaction.
Prince [Don Pedro] Come let vs hence, and put on other weedes, / And then to Leonatoes we will goe. / Claudio And Hymen now with luckier iſſue ſpeeds, / Then this for whom we rendred vp this woe. Than this for whom we rend'red up this woe!
These two dignified persons were followed by their respective attendants, and at a more humble distance by their guide, whose figure had nothing more remarkable than it derived from the usual weeds of a pilgrim.
In words, like weeds, I’ll wrap me o’er, Like coarsest clothes against the cold: But that large grief which these enfold Is given in outline and no more.
1888, Duane Hamilton Hurd, History of Essex County, Massachusetts, page 1183:
[…] he was beat and retreated back to his old encampment with his weed on his hat dragging on the ground, with the loss of more than nineteen hundred men; […]
O Sir, if we could but see the shape of our deare Mother England, as poets are wont to give a personal form to what they please, how would she appeare, think ye, but in a mourning weed, with ashes upon her head, and tears abundantly flowing from her eyes, to behold so many of her children expos'd at once, and thrust from things of dearest necessity, because their conscience could not assent to things which the Bishops thought indifferent.
From Scotsweid, weed. The longer form weidinonfa, wytenonfa (Old Scots wedonynpha) is attested since the 1500s. Jamieson's Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language analyses the longer form as a compound meaning "onfa(ll) of a weed", whereas the Scottish National Dictionary/DSL considers the short form a derivative of the longer form, and derives its first element from Old Englishwēdan(“to be mad or delirious”), from wōd(“mad, enraged”).
(Scotland) A sudden illness or relapse, often attended with fever, which befalls those who are about to give birth, are giving birth, or have recently given birth or miscarried or aborted.
1822, William Campbell, “Observations on the Disease usually termed Puerperal Fever, with Cases”, in The Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, volume 18:
The patient […] aborted between the second and third month; […] felt herself so well on the second day after, that she went to the washing-green; and, on her return home in the evening, was seized with a violent rigor, which, by herself and those around her, was considered as the forerunner of a weed.