Grass

Grass, gras, n. common herbage: an order of plants (Gramineæ), the most important in the whole vegetable kingdom, with long, narrow leaves and tubular stem, including wheat, rye, oats, rice, millet, and all those which supply food for nearly all graminivorous animals: short for asparagus—sparrow-grass: time of grass, spring or summer: the surface of a mine.—v.t. to cover with grass: to feed with grass: to bring to the grass or ground, as a bird or a fish—(various perennial fodder grasses are timothy, fox-tail, cock's-foot, and the fescue grasses, Italian rye-grass, &c.).—ns. Grass′-Cloth, a name applied to different kinds of coarse cloth, the fibre of which is rarely that of a grass, esp. to the Chinese summer-cloth made from Bœhmeria nivea, which is really a nettle; Grass′-cut′ter, one of the attendants on an Indian army, whose work is to provide provender for the baggage-cattle; Grass′er, an extra or temporary worker in a printing-office.—adjs. Grass′-green, green with grass: green as grass; Grass′-grown, grown over with grass.—ns. Grass′hopper, a saltatorial, orthopterous insect, nearly allied to locusts and crickets, keeping quiet during the day among vegetation, but noisy at night; Grass′iness; Grass′ing, the exposing of linen in fields to air and light for bleaching purposes; Grass′-land, permanent pasture; Grass′-oil, a name under which several volatile oils derived from widely different plants are grouped; Grass′-plot, a plot of grassy ground; Grass′-tree, a genus of Australian plants, with shrubby stems, tufts of long wiry foliage at the summit, and a tall flower-stalk, with a dense cylindrical spike of small flowers; Grass′-wid′ow, a wife temporarily separated from her husband, often also a divorced woman, or one deserted by her husband; Grass′-wrack, the eel-grass growing abundantly on the sea-coast.—adj. Grass′y, covered with or resembling grass, green.—Go to grass, to be turned out to pasture, esp. of a horse too old to work: to go into retirement, to rusticate: to fall violently (of a pugilist); Let the grass grow under one's feet, to loiter, linger.—Spanish grass (see Esparto). [A.S. gærs, græs; Ice., Ger., Dut., and Goth. gras; prob. allied to green and grow.]