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straw

Pronunciation: /stɹɔː/

The English word “straw” has 12 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. A dried stalk of a cereal plant.
  2. 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.
  3. A drinking straw.
  4. A pale, yellowish beige colour, like that of a dried straw.
  5. Anything proverbially worthless; the least possible thing.
  6. A straw owner.

adjective

  1. Made of straw.
  2. Of a pale, yellowish beige colour, like that of a dried straw.
  3. Imaginary, but presented as real.

verb

  1. To scatter or to spread loosely.
  2. To lay straw around plants to protect them from frost.
  3. To sell straws on the streets in order to cover the giving to the purchaser of things usually banned, such as pornography.

Etymology

From Middle English straugh, strauȝ, straw, strawe, strea, streuw, from Old English strēaw, strēow, from Proto-West Germanic *strau, from Proto-Germanic *strawą (“that which is strewn, straw”), from Proto-Indo-European *strew- (“to spread, strew”), from *sterh₃- (“to extend, spread”), from *ster- (“barren, infertile”). Cognates Cognate with Scots strae (“straw”), Yola stre, strew (“straw”),…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.