broom
pronunciation
How to pronounce broom in British English:
UK [bruːm]
How to pronounce broom in American English:
US [bruːm]
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- Noun:
- a cleaning implement for sweeping; bundle of straws or twigs attached to a long handle
- any of various shrubs of the genera Cytisus or Genista or Spartium having long slender branches and racemes of yellow flowers
- common Old World heath represented by many varieties; low evergreen grown widely in the northern hemisphere
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- Verb:
- sweep with a broom or as if with a broom
- finish with a broom
Word Origin
- broom
- broom: [OE] Broom was originally the name of the yellow-flowered bush; its application to the long-handled brush did not come about until the 15th century (the underlying notion is of a brush made from broom twigs tied to a handle). The plant-name occurs throughout the Germanic languages, but it is applied to quite a wide range of plants: Old High German brāmma, for instance, is a ‘wild rose’; Old Saxon hiopbrāmio is a ‘hawthorn bush’; and English bramble probably comes from the same source.=> bramble
- broom (n.)
- Old English brom "broom, brushwood," the common flowering shrub whose twigs were tied together to make a tool for sweeping, from Proto-Germanic *bræmaz "thorny bush" (cognates: Dutch braam, German Brombeere "blackberry"), from PIE root *bh(e)rem- "to project, a point." Traditionally, both the flowers and sweeping with broom twigs were considered unlucky in May (Suffolk, Sussex, Wiltshire, etc.). The witch's flying broomstick originally was one among many such objects (pitchfork, trough, bowl), but the broomstick became fixed as the popular tool of supernatural flight via engravings from a famous Lancashire witch trial of 1612.
Example
- 1. All you need is a broom .
- 2. Chase numbers around with a broom ?
- 3. My answer is to shut off the pc and give the child a rake or a broom .
- 4. But it was no good-every time they got near him , the broom would jump higher still .
- 5. And then he realized that his broom was completely out of his control .