Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Any of numerous grasslike plants of the family Cyperaceae, having solid stems, leaves in three vertical rows, and spikelets of inconspicuous flowers, with each flower subtended by a scalelike bract.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A plant of the genus Carex, an extensive genus of grass-like cyperaceous plants. The name is thence extended, especially in the plural, to the order Cyperaceæ, the sedge family. In popular use it is loosely comprehensive of numerous flaglike, rush-like, or grassy plants growing in wet places. See
Carex and Cyperaceæ. - n. A flock of herons or bitterns, sometimes of cranes.
- n. Synonyms Covey, etc. See flock.
Wiktionary
- n. Any plant of the genus Carex, the true sedges, perennial, endogenous herbs, often growing in dense tufts in marshy places. They have triangular jointless stems, a spiked inflorescence, and long grasslike leaves which are usually rough on the margins and midrib. There are several hundred species.
- n. Any plant of the family Cyperaceae.
- n. Obsolete spelling of siege.
- n. alternative spelling of segge.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Bot.) Any plant of the genus Carex, perennial, endogenous, innutritious herbs, often growing in dense tufts in marshy places. They have triangular jointless stems, a spiked inflorescence, and long grasslike leaves which are usually rough on the margins and midrib. There are several hundred species.
- n. (Zoöl.) A flock of herons.
WordNet 3.0
- n. grasslike or rushlike plant growing in wet places having solid stems, narrow grasslike leaves and spikelets of inconspicuous flowers
Etymologies
- Variant spellings. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English segge, from Old English secg; see sek- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Ah kingly kiss – no more regret nor old deep memories to mar the bliss; where the low sedge is thick, the gold day-lily outspreads and rests beneath soft fluttering of red swan wings and the warm quivering of the red swan's breast.”
“The perfect insects haunt sunny sedges and tree-stems -- whence the one is often called the sedge, the other the alder-fly -- and from thence drop into the trouts 'mouths; and within six inches of the bank will the good angler work, all the more sedulously and even hopefully if he sees no fish rising.”
“The whole of the different fields were covered with either the stalks of weeds, corn-stalks, or what is called sedge -- something like spear-grass upon the poor limestone in England; and the steward told me nothing would eat it, which is true.”
“Insects now enrich the air, frogs pipe cheerily in the shallows, soon followed by the ouzel, which is the first bird to visit a glacier lake, as the sedge is the first of plants.”
“The grass beside the well, buoyantly undisturbed, leads to an analogy with sedge which is growing near the sea on much shakier ground.”
The Guardian: Poem of the week: What mystery pervades a well! by Emily Dickinson
“A kind of sedge rush, common in swampy places in the West India islands, the _Adme cyperus_, enjoys a reputation for the cure of yellow fever.”
“Many of the boulders are moss-covered, a kind of sedge and long, flag-like grass spring among the crevices and add to the pitfalls, and the whole wood really has the air of having been bewitched.”
“It denotes some kind of sedge or reed which grows in marshy places.”
“The whole of the different fields were covered with either the stalks of weeds, corn-stalks, or what is called sedge ” something like spear-grass upon the poor limestone in England; and the steward told me nothing would eat it, which is true.”
“Earlier, three canoeists wended along the quiet millstream on the outgoing tide – passing marsh marigolds and partially submerged trunks of silvery willows towards reed beds, with spears of new growth and the scratchy song of returned sedge warblers.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘sedge’.
-
LIT - Ulysses - key words and phrases
money cowrie, bedraggle, omphalos, ineluctable, postprandial, bladderwrack, modality barnacle..., loofah, shipworm, cither, embattle, Malachi and 503 more...
-
Jesse's random
bathos, dragoman, tessellated, escutcheon, eikon, mondaine, basilisk, ciborium, rubric, machicolation, jet, defalcation and 198 more...
-
RELI - words with Biblical connotations
Words in the Bible evoking biblical stories or with special spiritual meaning. Proper names have been reduced to the minimum.
ark, judgement, holy, saint, baptism, spirit, love, eternal, altar, balsam, covenant, flood and 1115 more...
-
Words build meanings from origins( et...
These come from gamma meditation ,I think.
discursive, exogenous, machinations, purportedly, sumptuous, congruity, cantankerous, incongruous, festoon, hessian, ratiocinative, stratigraphic and 2046 more...
-
LIT - Odyssey - key words and phrases
Key words of the Odyssey by Homer in English including all those famous repeating epitethons like
"bright-eyed Athene"
"wine-dark sea"
"rosy-fingered dawn"
"long suf...Odysseus, sea, Athene, goddess, land, Achaean, wind, wave, Ithaca, lead, Poseidon, mortal and 732 more...
-
Darkness of Mind
fiend, lurid, phantom, macabre, rotten, ghastly, sallow, ghoulish, pallid, crooked, wan, congeal and 5 more...
-
Sedges
chufa, water chestnut, papyrus, nut sedge, saw grass, yellow nutsedge, fragrant sedge, bottlebrush sedge, bearded sedge, short-beaked sedge, fox sedge, stellate sedge and 12 more...
-
Just 'cause I like 'em, S
scrunch, solace, sabotage, saccade, sacerdotal, sacrilegious, sacristy, snappy, skew, steadfast, scowl, scorch and 781 more...
-
Reading Reading
Words from the works of Peter Reading - at least one from each (except the Schwitters-esque erosions, cut-ups etc).
overbright, pimpled, muskiness, effuse, stoup, maul, unlevel, viscid, perfidious, glibly, aloes, drouth and 449 more...
-
TheLastGoodNameLeft
The Last Good Words Left
ephemera, gammon, errata, ellipses, octopi, heteronormative, polyp, intersectionality, theses, california, halfback, fullback and 555 more...
-
the road
glaucoma, tarpaulin, flowstone, flue, rimstone, alabaster, gully, shoring, grike, riprap, windfall, transom and 120 more...
-
Flora and Fauna
poa annua, pooka, vole, bestiary, popple, turgor, starling, sharpy, copse, coreopsis, clove, corvid and 348 more...
-
5-0
Hecko, words! I’m so happy I’ve found you. I want to keep you all and never want to lose you again. I hope you like it here.
amscray, thistledown, tine, tinsel, pungent, snarl, wail, lanky, viscid, dawdle, luminous, stow and 2719 more...
-
A Peckerwick of Fiffoldry
fogray, whalesong, solregn, shoecabbage, thorn-bush, thistledown, pomander, thornbush, dreamy duskywing, sedge, unbunting-like, quilp and 119 more...
-
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...
-
the earth beneath our feet
Words that have to do with the earth: dirt, bedrock, grass, flowers, trees, etc.
alluvium, deposit, bedrock, clod, subsoil, undersoil, shale, sedge, hillock, macadam, bracken, chert and 1 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for sedge.

bilby
I wander by the edge
Of this desolate lake
Where wind cries in the sedge
Until the axle break
That keeps the stars in their round
And hands hurl in the deep
The banners of East and West
And the girdle of light is unbound,
Your breast will not lie by the breast
Of your beloved in sleep.
- W.B. Yeats, 'Aedh hears the Cry of the Sedge '. Sep 18, 2009
wytukaze Also a (technically incorrect) term of venery for bitterns and cranes; the correct term would be ‘a siege of…’.
“Here she dwelt with a retinue of aged servants, fantastic women and men half imbecile, who salaamed before her with eastern humility and yet addressed her in such terms as gossips use. Had she given them life they could not have obeyed with more reverence. Quaint things the women wrought for her—pomanders and cushions of thistledown; and the men were never happier than when they could tell her of the first thrush’s egg in the thorn-bush or the sedge of bitterns that haunted the marsh. She was their goddess and their daughter.�?
— R. Murray Gilchrist, A Night on the Moor and Other Tales of Dread Nov 12, 2008
yarb Citation on cleg. Jun 29, 2008