Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A slender bristle, especially one at the tip of a glume or lemma in a grass spikelet.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In botany, a bristle-shaped terminal or dorsal appendage, such as the beard of wheat, barley, and many grasses.
  • An obsolete or dialectal form of own.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Bot.) The bristle or beard of barley, oats, grasses, etc., or any similar bristlelike appendage; arista.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The bristle or beard of barley, oats, grasses, etc., or any similar bristlelike appendage; arista.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun slender bristlelike appendage found on the bracts of grasses

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English awne, from Old Norse ögn or from Old English agen; see ak- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Middle English aw(u)ne, agune, agene, from Old Danish aghn (compare modern avne), from Proto-Germanic *aganō, *ahanō 'chaff' (compare Old English ægnan, Frisian/Dutch agen, German Ahne, Agen), from Proto-Indo-European *aḱanā (compare Old Latin agna 'ear of wheat', Lithuanian ašnìs, Czech osina, Ancient Greek ἄκαινα (ákaina, "spike, prick"), ἄκανος (ákanos, "pine-thistle"), Sanskrit अशनि (aśáni, "thunderbolt, arrow tip"), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂eḱ (“sharp”). More at edge.

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