Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A variety of sorghum having a stiff, erect, much-branched flower cluster, the stalks of which are used to make brooms.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A variety of Sorghum vulgare, a tall reed-like grass, rising to a height of 8 or 10 feet, a native of India.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- (Bot.) A tall variety of grass (
Sorghum vulgare technicum), having a joined stem, like maize, rising to the height of eight or ten feet, and bearing its seeds on a panicle with long stiff branches, of which brooms are made.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun a variety of grass of the species Sorghum vulgare.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun tall grasses grown for the elongated stiff-branched panicle used for brooms and brushes
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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The sorghum known as "broomcorn" was supposedly first cultivated in the United States by Benjamin Franklin.
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It is miles of split-rail fence, moss on a wood shingle roof, broomcorn and flax in a pioneer garden.
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A few years ago while on a trip to colonial Williamsburg, seeds for broomcorn were purchased, sorghum vulgare.
Brooms « Fairegarden 2008
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There are several major domesticated cereals in the world, namely barley, foxtail and broomcorn millet, maize, rice, and wheat.
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He apparently brought the seed from England in 1725 (when he was only 19) and grew the first broomcorn in North America.
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For instance, broomcorn stalks are used for paper in France.
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In the United States broomcorn became, if anything, even more important than in Europe.
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Considerable development of broomcorn subsequently took place in the United States, but apparently few (if any) other countries have given the crop much attention.
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In 1781, Thomas Jefferson listed broomcorn among six important agricultural crops of Virginia.
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In the competition with man-made fibers and the vacuum cleaner - both of which should in theory have swept it aside - broomcorn is holding its own in the United States.
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