Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Any of various plants of the genus Euphorbia, characteristically having milky juice and small unisexual flowers that are surrounded by a cuplike structure composed of fused bracts.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To purge; cleanse; rid.
- To purge; froth; emit froth; especially, to work and cleanse itself, as ale.
- n. A plant of the genus Euphorbia. Several species have special names, chiefly used in books; a few related or similar plants also are called
spurges . Exotic species are better known as euphorbias.
Wiktionary
- n. Any plant of the genus Euphorbia exuding a bitter milky juice which was formerly used as a purgative.
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. obsolete To emit foam; to froth; -- said of the emission of yeast from beer in course of fermentation.
- n. (Bot.) Any plant of the genus Euphorbia. See euphorbia.
WordNet 3.0
- n. any of numerous plants of the genus Euphorbia; usually having milky often poisonous juice
Etymologies
- From Old French espurge. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English, from Old French espurge, from espurgier, to purge (from its use as a purgative), from Latin expūrgāre; see expurgate. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Euphorbia lathyrus, often called gopher spurge, which is reputed to repel the furry destructors.”
“A plant called spurge is often mistaken for goathead.”
“It was also shocking to me that their habitat inspector failed to notice the noxious weeds—leafy spurge along the waterways, Canada thistle, cheatgrass and other troublesome invaders largely spread by cattle.”
“Cheatgrass had moved in along with leafy spurge, Canada thistle and whitetop, all noxious weeds.”
“Suddenly it was mid-June and noxious weeds—leafy spurge, cheatgrass, hoary cress, Canada thistle—grew everywhere.”
“Alves came to the Camp Nou in the middle of a revolution marked by the arrival of a then unproven manager, Pep Guardiola, and a Stalinist spurge that saw an overhaul of the squad, including the departures of Deco, Ronaldinho and Edmílson, fellow countrymen who might have helped accommodate Alves at the club.”
The Guardian: Barcelona's Dani Alves on cheat allegations and the final against United
“I would go with Nikonfor yor 30-06, or if you want to spurge go with Leupold.”
“To spurge us forwards to the cinema he's revealed that there are two more stories in his head and he'll make them if his latest, Survival of the Dead,...”
“Buy quality cables with sturdy connectors, but don't spurge for pricey ones that offer little, if any, performance benefits. —”
Consumer Reports: Super Bowl Sunday: Are you ready for the "Big Game?"
“Sea holly, sea beet, sea campion, cliff samphire, sea spurge and the sea kale, which Lord Montagu is said to eat, all clambered about the shingle, sheltered in little driftwood alcoves, their colours accentuated against the pale silver of the pickled wood.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘spurge’.
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[Open] Correctly-spelled words that l...
Thanks to everyone who added to this list. (I moved it to a new URL, so all the words added on the first day are credited to me—sorry about that.)
(Here’s the original list with a slo...orignal, refect, collum, lightening, manakin, neumatic, mutch, miosis, radicle, tryptic, kyack, apatite and 119 more...
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Jesse's random
bathos, dragoman, tessellated, escutcheon, eikon, mondaine, basilisk, ciborium, rubric, machicolation, jet, defalcation and 198 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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Not Quite As Awful As They Sound
masticate, absquatulate, adumbrate, afflatus, fetial, anile, bilabial, cineaste, smew, copse, piebald, testudinate and 156 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...
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Libatious Words
worth pouring over
foison, fondant, fondue, font, found, funnel, fusile, libation, fuse, fusion, affusion, circumfuse and 85 more...
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coley's Words
multitaskeriffic, lurve, infinite, supercede, mediterranean, caribbean, lucid, transcend, glorious, affinity, monocle, alpha and 15 more...
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the hate list
words that give me the heebidie jeebidies
suffragette, get 'er done, fringe, causeway, twee, jumper, tgif, actually, syringe, seltzer, raisin, whited sepulchre and 72 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for spurge.
madmouth ah! "So called from the plant's purgative properties" (see OE)
this word fascinates me @-@ Sep 20, 2009