Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Any of several annual weeds of the genus Xanthium in the composite family, having small seedlike fruits enclosed within a prickly bur that clings readily to clothing or animal fur.
- n. A bur of this plant.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The clot-bur, Xanthium Strumarium, a weedy composite plant with close spiny involucres.
- n. The agrimony, Agrimonia Eupatoria.
- n. The burdock, Arctium Lappa.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Bot.) A coarse, composite weed, having a rough or prickly fruit; one of several species of the genus Xanthium; -- called also
clotbur .
WordNet 3.0
- n. any coarse weed of the genus Xanthium having spiny burrs
- n. burdock having heart-shaped leaves found in open woodland, hedgerows and rough grassland of Europe (except extreme N) and Asia Minor; sometimes cultivated for medicinal and culinary use
- n. any coarse weed of the genus Xanthium having spiny burrs
Etymologies
- cockle + bur (Wiktionary)
Examples
“The light infantry will be hidden in the switchgrass, and, hopefully, avoiding the cocklebur.”
“Among species characteristic of this habitat are Russian thistle, cocklebur, witchgrass, inland Sea Rocket and velvetleaf.”
“Which brought me to the present: host to a flea circus, stuck to a cocklebur plant, with an unknown intruder watching me from the woods who was packing a butt load of cat magic.”
“Inculcating and deluding the masses with a multi-billion dollar barrage of agitprop and sophistry potent enough to penetrate the minds of the most adroit thinkers, the moneyed interests behind corporatism and exploitative Capitalism have created a false dichotomy that clings to our collective psyche like a cocklebur deeply embedded in a wool sock.”
“For Bush, who is known to spend early-morning hours hacking at unwanted mesquite, cocklebur weeds, hanging limbs and underbrush only to go back for more after lunch, it borders on obsession.”
“It rankled in his mind like a cocklebur, raising question after question.”
“And so the man walks around and around again and finally sees the cocklebur.”
“I had stepped on some sort of cocklebur; half a dozen vicious caltrops were stuck in my bare sole, blood drops welling from the tiny punctures.”
“Harry had seen it grow in the half-year he'd been on the route, and was guessing when the pomegranates would roll all the way downhill into the cocklebur patch.”
“Also I am an accountant, an amanuensis, and a cocklebur.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘cocklebur’.
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11250 more...
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Wrapped up in books
I'm reading books. And there are words and phrases I come upon for the first time, or that are used with usages that are new to me.
So, this is just a plain list of those words. Don't expect ...hobble, mackerel, crone, cavort, hoyden, rheumy, scatter, hiss, recoil, trundle, shatter, flaxen and 200 more...
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looked up
Words I've come across while reading and looked up in the dictionary.
deesis, pendentive, revetment, aedicule, stemma, patera, ephod, entrepot, corbel, exedra, volute, archivolt and 1408 more...
Tweets
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