Word.ws English Dictionary

chickweed

/ˈtʃɪkwiːd/

chickweed noun: especially common chickweed (Stellaria media), a common, edible weed in North America and Europe.

chickweed: especially common chickweed (Stellaria media), a common, edible weed in North America and Europe
Image: Carl Axel Magnus Lindman, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

chickweed (usually uncountable, plural chickweeds)

  1. (usually) especially common chickweed (Stellaria media), a common, edible weed in North America and Europe.
    • I look at the little sprigs of chickweed trembling among the bean shoots and I am strangely moved. Such steadfastness! Such yearning! They want to live too. That is all they ask: to have their little moment in the world.1993, John Banville, Ghosts
  2. (usually) Stellaria pro parte
  3. (usually) Cerastium (mouse-ear chickweed)
  4. (usually) Ageratum conyzoides
  5. (usually) Holosteum (jagged chickweed)
  6. (usually) Moenchia (upright chickweed)
  7. (usually) Paronychia spp. (nailwort, whitlow-wort)

chickweed meaning in Tamil

chickweed in Tamil

பறவையுண்ணி

Forms of chickweed

pluralchickweeds
alternative formchick-weed

Origin of chickweed

From Middle English chykwed, chykewode, chike wed, chikewed, chekwede, a variant of chykynwede, chekyn-wede, cheken-wede (literally “chicken-weed”), equivalent to chick + weed. Etymonline claims the name was apparently applied to many plants fit for chicken feed, which were called in Old English cicene mete (“chicken food”).

Words formed from chickweed

Phrases with chickweed

Questions about chickweed

What does chickweed mean?
Chickweed means especially common chickweed (Stellaria media), a common, edible weed in North America and Europe.
What is chickweed in Tamil?
Chickweed in Tamil is பறவையுண்ணி. See Chickweed meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is chickweed?
Chickweed is a noun.
How do you pronounce chickweed?
Chickweed is pronounced /ˈtʃɪkwiːd/.
What is the plural of chickweed?
The plural of chickweed is chickweeds.

Words near chickweed in the dictionary

  1. chicks with dicks
  2. Chicksands
  3. Chicksaw
  4. Chicksaws
  5. chicksploitation
  6. chickweed
  7. chickweed wintergreen
  8. chickweeds
  9. chicky
  10. Chiclayo
  11. chicle

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: chickweed (page history and authors); chickweed (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-chickweed.wav.

Cite this entry: “chickweed.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/chickweed. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.