weed

• IPA^(key): /wiːd/

• Audio (US)

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• Homophone: we'd
• Rhymes: -iːd

From Middle English weed, weod, from Old English wēod (“weed”), from Proto-West Germanic *weud (“weed”).

Cognate with Saterland Frisian Jood (“weed”), West Frisian wjûd (“weed”), Dutch wied (“unwanted plant, weed”), German Low German Weed (“weed”), Old High German wiota (“fern”). See also woad.

weed (countable and uncountable, plural weeds)

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.

   • 1944, Miles Burton, chapter 5, in The Three Corpse Trick:

     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.

2. Short for duckweed.
3. (uncountable, archaic or obsolete) Underbrush; low shrubs.
   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 4:

     one rushing forth out of the thickest weed

   • 1842, Alfred Tennyson, “Œnone”, in Poems. […], volume I, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 128:

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

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

      Synonyms: see Thesaurus:marijuana

      • 2015 March 14, Barack Obama, Remarks by the President at the 2015 Gridiron Dinner‎:

        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.

   2. (with "the", uncountable, colloquial) Tobacco.
   3. (obsolete, countable) A cigar.
5. (countable) A weak horse, which is therefore unfit to breed from.
6. (countable, British, informal) A puny person; one who has little physical strength.
7. (countable, figuratively) Something unprofitable or troublesome; anything useless.

• grow like a weed
• weeds

From Middle English weeden, weden, from Old English wēodian (“to weed”), from Proto-Germanic *weudōną (“to uproot, weed”). Cognate with West Frisian wjûde, wjudde (“to weed”), Dutch wieden (“to weed”), German Low German weden (“to weed”).

weed (third-person singular simple present weeds, present participle weeding, simple past and past participle weeded)

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

   I weeded my flower bed.

2. (figurative) To pilfer the best items from a collection.
   • 1842, [anonymous collaborator of Letitia Elizabeth Landon], chapter XXXVIII, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 183:

     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. (library science) 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.

• weed out

From Middle English wede, from Old English wǣd (“dress, attire, clothing, garment”), from Proto-Germanic *wēdiz, from which also wad, wadmal. Cognate with Dutch lijnwaad, Dutch gewaad, German Wat.

weed (plural weeds)

1. (archaic) A garment or piece of clothing.
   • c. 1587–1588, [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire, London: Scolar Press, 1973, →ISBN, Act I, scene ii:

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

   • 1598–1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, Much Adoe about Nothing. […], quarto edition, London: […] V[alentine] S[immes] for Andrew Wise, and William Aspley, published 1600, →OCLC, [Act V, scene iii]:

     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!

   • 1612, Michael Drayton, “The Fift Song”, in [John Selden], editor, Poly-Olbion. Or A Chorographicall Description of Tracts, Riuers, Mountaines, Forests, and Other Parts of this Renowned Isle of Great Britaine, […], London: […] H[umphrey] L[ownes] for Mathew Lownes; I. Browne; I. Helme; I. Busbie, published 1613, →OCLC, page 75:

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

   • 1819 December 20 (indicated as 1820), Walter Scott, chapter IV, in Ivanhoe; a Romance. […], volume I, Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co. […], →OCLC, page 65:

     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.

   • 1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, Canto V:

     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.

2. (archaic) Clothing collectively; clothes, dress.
   • 1870, William Morris, “September: The Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon”, in The Earthly Paradise: A Poem, part III, London: F[rederick] S[tartridge] Ellis, […], →OCLC, page 80:

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

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

   He wore a weed on his hat.

4. (archaic) A hatband.
   • 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; […]

5. (archaic) Especially in the plural as widow's weeds: (female) mourning apparel.
   • 1641 May, John Milton, Of Reformation Touching Church-Discipline in England: And the Cavvses that hitherto have Hindred it; republished as Will Taliaferro Hale, editor, Of Reformation Touching Church-Discipline in England (Yale Studies in English; LIV), New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1916, →OCLC, 2nd book, pages 48–49:

     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.

   • 1820, John Keats, “Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil. A Story from Boccaccio.”, in Lamia, Isabella, the Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems, London: […] [Thomas Davison] for Taylor and Hessey, […], →OCLC, stanza XXIX, page 63:

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

From Scots weid, 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 English wēdan (“to be mad or delirious”), from wōd (“mad, enraged”).

weed (countable and uncountable, plural weeds)

1. (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.

2. (Scotland) Lymphangitis in a horse.

From the verb wee.

weed

1. simple past and past participle of wee

• “weed”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• weed in An American Dictionary of the English Language, by Noah Webster, 1828.
• (tobacco; a cigar): 1873, John Camden Hotten, The Slang Dictionary