Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Any of various green, usually small, nonvascular plants of the class Musci of the division Bryophyta.
- n. A patch or covering of such plants.
- n. Any of various other unrelated plants having a similar appearance or manner of growth, such as the club moss, Irish moss, and Spanish moss.
- v. To cover with moss.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A small herbaceous plant of the natural order Musci, with simple or branching stems and numerous generally narrow leaves: usually applied to a matted mass of such plants growing together; also, in popular use, any small cryptogamic plant, particularly a lichen: as, Iceland moss, club-moss, rock-moss, coral-moss, etc., and sometimes small matted phanerogams, as Pyxidanthera.
- n. Money: in allusion to the proverb, “a rolling stone gathers no moss.”
- To cover with moss.
- To become mossy; gather moss.
- n. A swamp or bog; specifically, a peatbog or a tract of such bogs; also, peat.
- n. An erroneous form of morse.
- n. The widow's-cross, Sedum pulchellum.
- n. The haircap-moss, Polytrichum juniperinum.
- n. Same as golden moss .
- n. Same as flowering moss .
- To fill with moss, as the crevices between the logs in a logging-camp.
Wiktionary
- n. A bog; a swamp.
- n. Any of various small green plants growing on the ground or on the surfaces of trees, stones etc.; now specifically, a plant of the division Bryophyta (formerly Musci).
- n. countable A type or species of such plant.
- v. intransitive To become covered with moss.
- v. transitive To cover (something) with moss.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Bot.) A cryptogamous plant of a cellular structure, with distinct stem and simple leaves. The fruit is a small capsule usually opening by an apical lid, and so discharging the spores. There are many species, collectively termed
Musci , growing on the earth, on rocks, and trunks of trees, etc., and a few in running water. - n. A bog; a morass; a place containing peat.
- v. To cover or overgrow with moss.
WordNet 3.0
- n. tiny leafy-stemmed flowerless plants
Etymologies
- From Middle English mos, from Old English mos ("bog, marsh, moss"), from Proto-Germanic *musan (“marsh, moss”), from Proto-Indo-European *mūs-, *meus- (“moss”). Cognate with Old High German mos (German Moos, "moss"), Icelandic mosi, Danish mos, Swedish mossa, Latin muscus ("moss"). (Wiktionary)
- Middle English, from Old English mos, bog, and from Medieval Latin mossa, moss (of Germanic origin). (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“While the moss is dried and not alive, you can breathe a sigh of relief knowing you never have to worry about it dying and disappearing when you forget to water it.”
Moss Table Adds a Micro-Landscape to Your Living Room | Inhabitat
“Castle; then came yesterday evening to this Town, Slept sound, and this morning engaged an old Welshman with a cart with benches, and three little horses, to carry us to the summit of the Sugar loaf Mountain, Such fun, such a road, and such a feast on the mountain moss, and such a sight!”
“On the Northend you get lots of snow, the trees covered in moss, the ocean.”
“I was feeling like a complete failure because, jeepers, java moss is supposed to be fairly indestructiable.”
“With the dry weather we've had, the moss is yellowing and the new leaves on the tree are very light green.”
“Yet never did it ring more loudly than that night, as I watched her draw back the blanket of moss from the coals, blow up the fire, and cook the evening meal.”
“I got moss on the brain from writing the word moss so many times too.”
“We are manipulating the search with this experiment, mentioning the word moss frequently.”
“I should have done some research first before causing brain damage from writing the word moss so many times.”
“We just did the google search and this did not show up at all with the word moss as the search.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘moss’.
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CULI - wine-tasting adjectives
In this area of expertise nouns are frequently used as adjectives (almond, bacon, cider, diesel, fennel, fresh-cut hay, wool) or new adjectives are formed (appley, berrylike, citrusy, full-bodied, ...
acetic, acidic, aged, angular, appley, astringent, attractive, austere, berrylike, big, bitter, brawny and 511 more...
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Open List: Greens
A lits of greens: cooked leafy vegetables; pigments, paint names, compound words, etc; words and phrases that pertain to or contain "green". Please add your favorites!
See this list f...greenery, collard greens, mustard greens, turnip greens, green shoots, viridian green, malachite green, sap green, green grocer, radish greens, beet greens, spring green and 282 more...
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Bridesmaid revisited
The Sacred & Profane Memories of a Maid of Honor.
dress, bridesmaid, maid of honor, plane ticket, camera, batteries, Catholicism, beach, wire and ribbon f..., champagne, map, Jesus and 54 more...
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Greens
asparagus, celadon, chartreuse, emerald, smaragdine, malachite, forest, lime, jade, myrtle, pear, olive and 12 more...
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Green
olive, grass, dark green, light green, emerald, lime, moss, sea green, jade, asparagus, apple green, camouflage green and 17 more...
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Buttery
Words that make me feel cozy
Noodle, Nugget, Butter, Soft, Snug, Feather, Socks, Knit, Mug, Curl, Billow, Lounge and 315 more...
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Flutter
tuberose, golden apple, apple cider, unicorn, extraordinary, Pleiades, Merope, speckle, glitter, rose, pitter-pat, whale and 314 more...
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If-Christ-Had-Not-Died-For-Thee-Thou-...
Words that have been used as baby names, including virtue names, nature names, place names, etc.
The title is an actual name given to a Puritan boy in the 17th century.faith, hope, grace, charity, chastity, prudence, patience, temperance, river, phoenix, stone, violet and 455 more...
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aliko's Words
deli, turkey, bodrum, deniz, sunny, seks, tatil, hava, zeeman, captain, kapitein, kaptan and 256 more...
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Flora
fenugreek, verbena, saxifrage, arbutus, calendula, nasturtium, lobelia, hellebore, rhododendron, philodendron, bellflower, heuchera and 449 more...
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#1
Words I Like
abide, sashay, microbial, scented, nature, amorphous, unknown, imagine, photogenic, soft, silken, history and 188 more...
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Two years
Okay, I admit it. I made a list of words my daughter knew when she was two years old.
bat, baba, a, abalone, about, acorn, adrienne, after, again, airplane, alison, all and 694 more...
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oldecat's Words
noncommutative, morphodynamics, ferrywoman, circumcircle, acceleration, inactivity, biodiesel, corrosion, quadrilogy, imprimitivity, normalizer, teleosemantics and 240 more...
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Warp, Woof, Wimble
My favorite words.
prurient, locution, mondegreen, vaunted, lugubrious, larine, warp, woof, wimble, ineffable, pyknic, sodden and 114 more...
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Chromonyms
These chromonyms are defined as colors in at least one dictionary (mostly MW3). (Actually there's one fake, for reasons I'll explain someday.) They are all one-word nouns such as "kelly", which can...
absinthe, acacia, acorn, alabaster, alesan, almond, aloma, amaranth, amber, amethyst, anemone, anil and 821 more...
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The things they carried (List 2)
Listening to this as an audio book for the second time. Tim O'Brien uses simple words and phrases to great effect. Very few unfamilar and big words . The writing style reminds me of words from Joh...
The, Things, They, Carried, meant, fond, By necessity,, presented to him, far beyond, against the brick..., reaching, taut and 2940 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for moss.
mpassenkov A rolling stone gathers no moss Oct 14, 2011
reesetee Sounds nice. No mowing, no chemicals, good for the environment....
*wondering how long it would take for moss to cover the yard* Oct 15, 2007
rocksinmypockets Oh, that's gorgeous! Thanks for the visual, SG. Oct 15, 2007
sonofgroucho It's even invaded the patio! Oct 15, 2007
skipvia Exactly--green, and it never needs cutting. Oct 15, 2007
rocksinmypockets Lucky you! (In all seriousness.) Oct 14, 2007
sonofgroucho My lawn consists largely of this! Oct 14, 2007