beesom

Noun

besom (plural besoms)

1. A broom made from a bundle of twigs tied onto a shaft.
   • As a kid I went to the Russian Bath with my own father. … Down in the cellar men moaned on the steam-softened planks while they were massaged abrasively with oak-leaf besoms lathered in pickle buckets.1976 September, Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift, New York, N.Y.: Avon Books, →ISBN, page 56
2. (Northern England, Scotland, derogatory) A troublesome woman.
   • "Eh, but she was a besom, if a' tales be true !"1903, Samuel Rutherford Crockett, The Dark O' the Moon: A Novel, page 130
3. Any cleansing or purifying agent.
   • "The march of an army through a conquered country supposing it to be a highly civilized one, is a besom of destruction, whose havoc, moral and material, it would take at least a century to recover."1851, “A Few Words about War and the Peace Congress.”, in Littell’s Living Age, volume 28, page 364

See all 4 meanings of besom