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broom
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
broom
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a broom cupboard (=for brushes and other things you use to clean the house)
whisk broom
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
new
▪ The servants came scurrying with new brooms and pails; taper boys ran to replenish the wall-sconces.
▪ When the new broom arrived, many officers left.
▪ What we need is a new broom.
▪ And I was a new broom with a reputation for sweeping clean.
▪ As the new man at Century wielding the new broom, he expected that decisions and policies would come to his desk.
▪ A new broom has swept through everything, but the basic furnishings of the old presuppositions go untouched.
▪ At home in the afternoon he had bound them together in clusters to make three new brooms.
▪ They charge ahead with their ill-advised new brooms.
■ NOUN
cupboard
▪ I mean, that bit in the broom cupboard - oh, you didn't see it, did you?
▪ It's the same place Boris Becker got his mistress pregnant in the broom cupboard.
▪ The only open door led to a broom cupboard.
▪ Add to that a groom in a broom cupboard with the bridesmaid and a case of mistaken identities.
▪ Get cleaning bucket and powder and disinfectant from the broom cupboard.
handle
▪ Dowels and broom handles are useful.
▪ Pushing a broom handle up the tube will allow you to push the plunger up to this moulded shoulder and into the tube.
▪ With a long broom handle, a kitchen fork fixed on its end, they spike away the loose, dry divots.
▪ A hushed audience watched her spread her legs, and present the broom handle to her open crotch.
■ VERB
make
▪ At home in the afternoon he had bound them together in clusters to make three new brooms.
▪ Must have been ten men at that table making brooms.
sweep
▪ A new broom has swept through everything, but the basic furnishings of the old presuppositions go untouched.
▪ She was taking a broom and carefully sweeping a path, but Glover cautioned her anyway.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
new broom
▪ A new broom has swept through everything, but the basic furnishings of the old presuppositions go untouched.
▪ And I was a new broom with a reputation for sweeping clean.
▪ As the new man at Century wielding the new broom, he expected that decisions and policies would come to his desk.
▪ At home in the afternoon he had bound them together in clusters to make three new brooms.
▪ The servants came scurrying with new brooms and pails; taper boys ran to replenish the wall-sconces.
▪ They charge ahead with their ill-advised new brooms.
▪ What we need is a new broom.
▪ When the new broom arrived, many officers left.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Banister installs him in a broom closet upstairs.
▪ He would have reached for a broom or a piece of kindling.
▪ I looked back and saw them coming after me with the broom.
▪ I mean, that bit in the broom cupboard - oh, you didn't see it, did you?
▪ It's the same place Boris Becker got his mistress pregnant in the broom cupboard.
▪ Like the rituals of harvest and planting in pastoral societies, the desert broom tufts are a sign.
▪ There's pots to wash and a broom under the counter.
▪ We compared the sizes of the gardeners' brooms with our own.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Broom

Broom \Broom\, v. t. (Naut.) See Bream.

Broom

Broom \Broom\ (br[=oo]m), n. [OE. brom, brome, AS. br[=o]m; akin to LG. bram, D. brem, OHG. br[=a]mo broom, thorn?bush, G. brombeere blackberry. Cf. Bramble, n.]

  1. (Bot.) A plant having twigs suitable for making brooms to sweep with when bound together; esp., the Cytisus scoparius of Western Europe, which is a low shrub with long, straight, green, angular branches, minute leaves, and large yellow flowers.

    No gypsy cowered o'er fires of furze and broom.
    --Wordsworth.

  2. An implement for sweeping floors, etc., commonly made of the panicles or tops of broom corn, bound together or attached to a long wooden handle; -- so called because originally made of the twigs of the broom.

    Butcher's broom, a plant ( Ruscus aculeatus) of the Smilax family, used by butchers for brooms to sweep their blocks; -- called also knee holly. See Cladophyll.

    Dyer's broom, a species of mignonette ( Reseda luteola), used for dyeing yellow; dyer's weed; dyer's rocket.

    Spanish broom. See under Spanish.

Related phrases:
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
broom

Old English brom "broom, brushwood," the common flowering shrub whose twigs were tied together to make a tool for sweeping, from Proto-Germanic *bræmaz "thorny bush" (cognates: Dutch braam, German Brombeere "blackberry"), from PIE root *bh(e)rem- "to project, a point."\n

\nTraditionally, both the flowers and sweeping with broom twigs were considered unlucky in May (Suffolk, Sussex, Wiltshire, etc.). The witch's flying broomstick originally was one among many such objects (pitchfork, trough, bowl), but the broomstick became fixed as the popular tool of supernatural flight via engravings from a famous Lancashire witch trial of 1612.

Wiktionary
broom

Etymology 1 n. 1 (label en countable) A domestic utensil with fibers bound together at the end of a long handle, used for sweeping. 2 (context countable curling English) An implement with which players sweep the ice to make a stone travel further and curl less; a sweeper. 3 Any of several yellow-flowered shrubs of the family Fabaceae, in the genera (taxlink Cytisus genus noshow=1), ''Genista'', and (taxlink Spartium genus noshow=1), with long, thin branches and small or few leaves. vb. (context transitive intransitive English) To sweep. Etymology 2

vb. (context nautical English) (alternative form of bream nodot=yes English) (gloss: to clean a ship's bottom)

Related phrases:
WordNet
broom

  1. v. sweep with a broom or as if with a broom; "Sweep the crumbs off the table"; "Sweep under the bed" [syn: sweep]

  2. finish with a broom

broom

  1. n. a cleaning implement for sweeping; bundle of straws or twigs attached to a long handle

  2. any of various shrubs of the genera Cytisus or Genista or Spartium having long slender branches and racemes of yellow flowers

  3. common Old World heath represented by many varieties; low evergreen grown widely in the northern hemisphere [syn: heather, ling, Scots heather, Calluna vulgaris]

Related phrases:
Wikipedia
Broom (disambiguation)

A broom is a cleaning tool which also had other uses (e.g. magical and punitive).

Broom may also refer to:

Broom
Broom

Image:Broom (PSF).jpg|A broom with bristles traditionally made using broom corn. Image:BroomsforSale.jpg| Sorghum-made brooms with long handles as well as short handles

Japanese construction worker cleaning up his construction site with a Japanese broom.

A broom is a cleaning tool consisting of usually stiff fibers (often made of materials such as plastic, hair, or corn husks) attached to, and roughly parallel to, a cylindrical handle, the broomstick. It is thus a variety of brush with a long handle. It is commonly used in combination with a dustpan.

In many Asian countries, however, brooms are not always made of stiff fibers, as there is often a distinction between a "hard broom" and a "soft broom". Soft brooms are made for sweeping the walls of cob webs and spiders, and are very important for that reason. Hard brooms are made for the harder job of actually sweeping dirt off sidewalks.

Broom (album)

Broom is a full-length album from indie pop/rock band Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin. It was released in the United States in 2005.

Broom (surname)

Broom is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:

  • Christina Broom (1862–1939), British photographer
  • Jacob Broom (1752–1810), American businessman and politician
  • Jacob Broom (congressman) (1808–1864), United States Representative from Pennsylvania
  • James M. Broom (1776–1850), American lawyer and politician
  • Mark Broom (born 1971), British techno musician and DJ
  • Neil Broom (born 1983), New Zealand cricketer
  • Robert Broom (1866–1951), South African physician and paleontologist
Related phrases:

Usage examples of "broom".

She would have hit Aunty Em with the broom and called Toto and walked away and never come back.

He was about to go after a Beater when the wizard who had dropped his bat before maneuvered his broom so that he could use the twigs to hit a Bludger at Neil, who was oblivious.

Harry took his broom straight up, only to find that a Bludger was heading directly for him.

They seemed to have woken up now, and as his team scored their fourth goal, still holding the English team to one-hundred, Harry was somewhat shocked to feel a jolt as a Bludger collided with his broom twigs, making him fly crazily for a moment until he grasped the handle with determination and zoomed straight up, to shake the wobbles out of it.

Beyond the true garrigue, with its cistus, its broom, its prickly dwarf oak, there lie a series of false garrigues, vegetably speaking worse than the true.

The next comber broomed the sea clean and came aboard and grabbed his legs from under him, dragged him against the bowsprit housing, then sucked him back along the deck, Tinker fighting for control again.

The sudden whirr of a cushat is an incident, or the leaping of a lamb among the broom.

Some doors and windows were real, and real weather blew like a natural broom through the geriatric ward.

Cleppetty pursued an escaped quail about the kitchen with a broom, and Ghillie, huddled in a corner, frantically read names out loud from a book of household exorcisms.

Inside Kithraformerly of the Skyrrmanwas struggling to hold down the lid of a pot from which a score of naked chicken wings protruded, flapping madly, while Cleppetty pursued an escaped quail about the kitchen with a broom, and Ghillie, huddled in a corner, frantically read names out loud from a book of household exorcisms.

Isobel Gowdie changed herself into a jackdaw and flew to the sabbat, leaving behind a broom in her bed to delude her husband.

So, as you can see, not only was there a bride and a groom, but there was also a gride and a broom.

Using a wide broom, Grom gingerly shifted the body off the stone, only to have it crumble into pieces.

Stilt walkers and jugglers, acrobats and dancers, gigants and pithkies, costumes and floats -- some of which even celebrate the revolution: hardboard mock-ups of armored cars with broom handles poking out the windows and people in real or fake militia uniforms trotting alongside.

Me and Julie jus' jumped over de broom in front of Marster and us was married.