straw
Part of speech: noun
adj
verb
Morphological type: simple
Etymology: From Middle English straw, from Old English strēaw, from Proto-West Germanic *strau, from Proto-Germanic *strawą (“that which is strewn, straw”), from Proto-Indo-European *strew- (“to spread around, strew”).
Cognate with Saterland Frisian Sträi (“straw”), West Frisian strie (“straw”), Dutch stro (“straw”), German and German Low German Stroh (“straw”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish strå (“straw”), Icelandic strá (“straw”), Walloon strin, Albanian shtrohë (“kennel”).
Inflected forms:
form: straws
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: straws
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: strawing
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: strawed
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: strawed
pos: verb
tags: past
Senses:
gloss: A dried stalk of a cereal plant.
pos: noun
tags: countable
gloss: Such dried stalks considered collectively; this bulk matter may be a chief salable product, a by-product, fodder, bedding, or green manure, depending on region and on current market conditions.
pos: noun
tags: uncountable
gloss: A drinking straw.
pos: noun
tags: countable
gloss: A pale, yellowish beige colour, like that of a dried straw.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncommon
uncountable
gloss: Anything proverbially worthless; the least possible thing.
pos: noun
tags: countable
figuratively
uncountable
examples: to not care a straw
‘For thy sword and thy bow I care not a straw,
Nor all thine arrows to boot;
If I get a knop upon thy bare scop,
Thou canst as well shite as shoote.’
He also decided, which was more to his purpose, that Eleanor did not care a straw for him, and that very probably she did care a straw for his rival.
To be deeply interested in the accidents of our existence, to enjoy keenly the mixed texture of human experience, rather leads a man to disregard precautions, and risk his neck against a straw.
gloss: A straw owner.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: The Bromfield Street offices were housed in a dilapidated but heavily-insured building, owned by a straw for a wealthy downtown real estate developer, surrounded by expensive new commercial developments, and in a city renowned for arson-for-profit.
gloss: Made of straw.
pos: adj
tags: not-comparable
examples: straw hat
gloss: Of a pale, yellowish beige colour, like that of a dried straw.
pos: adj
tags: not-comparable
gloss: Imaginary, but presented as real.
pos: adj
tags: figuratively
not-comparable
examples: A straw enemy built up in the media to seem like a real threat, which then collapses like a balloon.
gloss: To scatter or to spread loosely.
pos: verb
tags: idiomatic
transitive
gloss: To lay straw around plants to protect them from frost.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
gloss: To sell straws on the streets in order to cover the giving to the purchaser of things usually banned, such as pornography.
pos: verb
tags: obsolete
slang
examples: It was the custom for the disaffected of those days to make known their grievances by distributing papers on doors of public buildings, and even strawing them in the high way, for the benefit of the chance passenger.
I have already alluded to "strawing," which can hardly be described as quackery. It is rather a piece of mountebankery. […] The strawer offers to sell any passer by in the streets a straw and give the purchaser a paper which he dares not sell. Accordingly as he judges of the character of his audience, so he intimates that the paper is political, libellous, irreligious, or indecent.
Forasmoche as there be diverse lewd and sedicious [folks] personnes [being so given to sedicon as they care not f] whiche do labor nowe to mayntain the traitorous doings of the duke of Somerset, and for that purposed do ivise the most vile false and traitorous bills, papers, and boks that ever were harde off, strawing the same in the stretes, aswel within the Citie of London [and] as in diverse [other] townes and other places in the cuntrey; wherein they do falsly and traitorously travail to slaunder the kings mat Counsail, thinking therby to amase and abuse his Mat good subgietts, which be in a redynes to joyne with the said counsail for the delyverey of the king our soveraign Lords most Royal person, remayning to his great peril and damage in the said dukes custody, and for the restoring of this noble Realme to some better order and quietnes, whiche shalbe the benefite [of every man] of us all universally;
Townspeople who saw 'strawing' and 'following the wran' as invasions by 'lusty young men of the country' saw Volunteer events in the same way.
Related words: balibuntal
buntal
corn dolly
etiolated
fescue
huarache
leghorn
paillasse
paillette
pallet
parabuntal
rick
sacaton
skep
stipule
stubble
zori
Derived words: a drowning man will clutch at a straw
a drowning man will grab at a straw
a drowning man will grasp at a straw
a straw shows how the wind blows
a straw shows which way the wind blows
bang straw
bang-straw
bedstraw
bendy straw
broomstraw
buy straw hats in winter
called to straw
clutch at a straw
crazy straw
drinking-straw
grab at a straw
grasp at a straw
in the straw
neststraw
oatstraw
onion straw
poppy straw
sampling straw
soda straw
spoon straw
straw bail
strawbale
straw ballot
strawbed
straw-bed
straw bed
strawberry
straw bid
straw-bottomed
strawbreaker
straw cat
straw-clutching
straw-clutchingly
straw-colored
strawcraft
straw donor
strawfork
strawful
straw-grasping
straw-hat
straw-hatted
strawhead
straw itch
strawless
strawlike
straw lily
strawman
straw nail
straw-necked ibis
straw owner
strawpedo
straw purchase
straw purchaser
straw shoe
strawstack
straw stem
straw tick
strawware
strawweight
strawwoman
strawy
straw that stirs the drink
cheese straw
drinking straw
draw the short straw
grasp at straws
jackstraw
the last straw
the final straw
make bricks without straw
man of straw
pine straw
silly straw
straw boss
straw buyer
straw hat
straw in the wind
straw man
straw mushroom
straw poll
the straw that broke the camel's back
straw vote
straw wine
strawboard
straw-coloured
strawflower
strawworm
windlestraw
Translations: