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The Collaborative International Dictionary
Fescue

Fescue \Fes"cue\ (f[e^]s"k[-u]), n. [OE. festu, OF. festu, F. f['e]tu, fr. L. festuca stalk, straw.]

  1. A straw, wire, stick, etc., used chiefly to point out letters to children when learning to read. ``Pedantic fescue.''
    --Sterne.

    To come under the fescue of an imprimatur.
    --Milton.

  2. An instrument for playing on the harp; a plectrum. [Obs.]
    --Chapman.

  3. The style of a dial. [Obs.]

  4. (Bot.) A grass of the genus Festuca.

    Fescue grass (Bot.), a genus of grasses ( Festuca) containing several species of importance in agriculture. Festuca ovina is sheep's fescue; F. elatior is meadow fescue.

Fescue

Fescue \Fes"cue\ (f[e^]s"k[-u]), v. i. & t. [imp. & p. p. Fescued; p. pr. & vb. n. Fescuing.] To use a fescue, or teach with a fescue.
--Milton.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
fescue

1510s, "teacher's pointer," alteration of festu "piece of straw, twig" (late 14c.), from Old French festu "straw; object of little value" (12c., Modern French fétu), from Vulgar Latin festucum, from Latin festuca "straw, stalk, rod," probably related to ferula "reed, whip, rod" (see ferule). Sense of "pasture, lawn grass" is first recorded 1762. Wyclif (1382) has festu in Matt. vii:3 for the "mote" in the eye. In Old French rompre le festu was to symbolically break a straw to signify the breaking of a bond.

Wiktionary
fescue

n. 1 A straw, wire, stick, etc., used chiefly to point out letters to children when learning to read. 2 A hardy grass commonly used to border golf fairways in temperate climates. Any member of the genus ''Festuca''. 3 An instrument for playing on the harp; a plectrum. 4 The style of a sundial. vb. To use a fescue, or teach with a fescue.

WordNet
fescue

n. grass with wide flat leaves cultivated in Europe and America for permanent pasture and hay and for lawns [syn: fescue grass, meadow fescue, Festuca elatior]

Wikipedia

Usage examples of "fescue".

Mr Widdershins acted for the defendants and Mr Fescue had been instructed by Mr Gibling and Mr Gibling.

Mr Fescue, the plaintiff had been shunned by his neighbours to the extent that eleven houses adjacent to his address or in the same street had been left by their occupants to avoid any connection between them and a supposed murderer.

However in the light of the statements made by his learned friend, Mr Fescue, the defence were prepared to apologize and make financial reparation for the damage done to the plaintiff and his wife and for the scorn, ridicule and consequential loss of his profession .

It was granted and was spent in exultation by Mr Fescue and Mr Gibling and Lockhart, and in acrimonious arguments by Mr Widdershins and Miss Goldring.

Mr Fescue had his facts right: he had heard them from Lockhart who in turn had them from Jessica.

When the level prairie merged into low rolling hills, dotted with fescue and feather grass and red with the richness of iron ore -- the red ochre making it hallowed ground -- Brun knew the salt marsh was not far beyond.

But it was the young bluegrass and ripening fescue and feather grasses that predominated, turning the steppes into waves of softly billowing silver accented by shadows of blue sage.

Fulk approached through flowering feather grass and luxuriant fescue whose stalks shushed along his knees and thighs.

Captain Fulk approached through flowering feather grass and luxuriant fescue whose stalks shushed along his knees and thighs.

He heard a stream and kicked through wood-straw and fescue to the bank, where he knelt and drank his fill.

But here they were just one of a variety of insects, like the butterflies flicking their bright colors in a quivery dance across the tops of the fescue, and the harmless drone fly, that resembled a stinging honeybee, hovering over a buttercup.

Except for its darker stems, it resembled the more familiar, lighter-colored species that often grew alongside fescue and crested hair grass, until the wind and sun dried the plains.

A good enough solution to have diversified into five hundred genera, five thousand species: corn, wheat, rice, bamboo, sorghum, reed, oats, timothy, fescue, Kentucky blue.

Farther up the rocky slopes, weeds and ornamental grassesripgut and woodland brome, foxtail fescue and ryegrass-had spread across the landscape in a golden haze that softened the stony ridges.

Tallgrass and short steppe grasses and herbs, feather grasses and fescues, the central steppic plains were an extraordinarily rich, abundantly productive grassland blowing in the wind.