Definitions

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

  • noun Any of numerous grasslike plants of the family Cyperaceae, characteristically having solid three-sided stems, leaves arranged in three rows, and spikelets of inconspicuous flowers.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A plant of the genus Carex, an extensive genus of grass-like cyperaceous plants.
  • noun A flock of herons or bitterns, sometimes of cranes.
  • noun Synonyms Covey, etc. See flock.

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

  • noun (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.
  • noun (Zoöl.) A flock of herons.
  • noun (Zoöl.) the clapper rail. See under 5th Rail.
  • noun (Zoöl.) a small European singing bird (Acrocephalus phragmitis). It often builds its nest among reeds; -- called also sedge bird, sedge wren, night warbler, and Scotch nightingale.

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

  • noun 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.
  • noun Any plant of the family Cyperaceae.
  • noun Obsolete spelling of siege.
  • noun Alternative spelling of segge.

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

  • noun grasslike or rushlike plant growing in wet places having solid stems, narrow grasslike leaves and spikelets of inconspicuous flowers

Etymologies

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

[Middle English segge, from Old English secg; see sek- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Old English secg, from Germanic. Cognate with Dutch zegge and German Segge, dialectal German Saher ‘reeds’.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Variant spellings.

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Examples

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  • Citation on cleg.

    June 29, 2008

  • 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

    November 13, 2008

  • 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 '.

    September 18, 2009

  • Sedge, a portmanteau of saw-like and edge. Sedge leaves have serrated edges unlike the other graminoids: grasses and rushes.

    June 7, 2020