weed

noun

1. (countable)Any plant unwanted at the place where and at the time when it is growing.

   “If it isn't in a straight line or marked with a label, it's a weed.”

   “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.”

   “Some of the weeds that cause an undesirable flavor in milk are: onion, tarweed, scaleweed, garlic, mustard, pepper grass.”

   “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.”

2. (abbreviation, alt-of, countable, ellipsis, uncountable)Ellipsis of duckweed.
3. (archaic, obsolete, uncountable)Underbrush; low shrubs.

   “one rushing forth out of the thickest weed”

   “A wild and wanton pard[…]/ Crouched fawning in the weed.”

4. (informal, uncountable)A drug or the like made from the leaves or flowers of a plant.

   “Hold up, hey / For my niggas who be actin' too bold, take a seat / Hope you ready for the next episode / Hey, hey, hey, hey / Smoke weed every day”

   “And I predict you will laugh harder than ever. I’m not saying I’m any funnier. I’m saying weed is now legal in D.C.”

5. (colloquial, uncountable)A drug or the like made from the leaves or flowers of a plant.
6. (colloquial, countable, obsolete)A drug or the like made from the leaves or flowers of a plant.

   “1862, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley's Secret "If ever you smoke, my dear aunt (and I am told that many women take a quiet weed under the rose), be very careful how you choose your cigars."”

7. (countable)A weak horse, which is therefore unfit to breed from.
8. (British, countable, informal)A puny person; one who has little physical strength.
9. (countable, figuratively)Something unprofitable or troublesome; anything useless.
10. (archaic)A garment or piece of clothing.

    “Lie here ye weedes that I diſdaine to weare, This compleat armor, and this curtle-axe Are adiuncts more beſeeming Tamburlaine.”

    “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!”

    “Shee, in a watchet vveed, with manie a curious waue, / VVhich as a princelie gift great Amphitrite gaue; […]”

    “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.”

11. (archaic)Clothing collectively; clothes, dress.

    “His mother o'er her barm-cloth wide / Gazed forward somewhat timidly / The new-comer's bright weed to see.”

12. (archaic)An article of dress worn in token of grief; a mourning garment or badge.

    “He wore a weed on his hat.”

13. (archaic)A hatband.

    “[…] 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; […]”

14. (archaic)Especially in the plural as widow's weeds: (female) mourning apparel.

    “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.”

    “Poor Girl! put on thy stifling widow’s weed, / And ’scape at once from Hope’s accursed bands; […]”

15. (Scotland, countable, uncountable)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.

    “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.”

16. (Scotland, countable, uncountable)Lymphangitis in a horse.

verb

1. (transitive)To remove unwanted vegetation from a cultivated area (especially grass).

   “I weeded my flower bed.”

   “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.”

   “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.”

2. (figuratively, transitive)To pilfer the best items from a collection.

   “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.”

3. (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.”

   “Librarians overwhelmingly believe that weeding increases use of books and patron satisfaction.”

4. (form-of, participle, past)simple past and past participle of wee

name

1. A city in Siskiyou County, California, United States.