Word.ws English Dictionary

darnel

/ˈdɑːnəɫ/

darnel noun: any of the genus Lolium of grasses, especially as a weed in wheat fields.

darnel: any of the genus Lolium of grasses, especially as a weed in wheat fields
Image: H. Zell, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

darnel (usually uncountable, plural darnels)

  1. (usually) Any of the genus Lolium of grasses, especially as a weed in wheat fields.
    • With harlocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers, / Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow / In our sustaining corn.c. 1603–1606, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of King Lear”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount...
    • Poppies, hemp, and darnel were scavenged, dried, and ground up to produce a medieval hash brownie known as "crazy bread".1999, Robert Lacey, Danny Danziger, The Year 1000: What life was like at the turn of The First Millennium, London: Abacus, published 2000, page 102
    Synonyms:
    ryegrass, bearded darnel, poison darnel, white darnel
    1. (usually) Especially, the species Lolium temulentum, often host to a fungus toxic to humans and animals.

Synonyms of darnel

  • ryegrass
  • bearded darnel
  • poison darnel
  • white darnel

Forms of darnel

pluraldarnels

Origin of darnel

From Middle English darnel, dernel, from Old Northern French darnelle ( > dialectal French dernelle, darnette), of Germanic origin, possibly Proto-West Germanic *darjan (“to harm, injure”). Displaced native Old English boþen. Related to Walloon darne, derne (“stunned, dazed, drunk”), Middle Dutch verdarnt, verdaernt (“stunned, dumbfounded, angry”). The association with being dazed or drunkenness is due to the well-known intoxicating effects of the plant.

Words formed from darnel

Questions about darnel

What does darnel mean?
Darnel means any of the genus Lolium of grasses, especially as a weed in wheat fields.
What part of speech is darnel?
Darnel is a noun.
How do you pronounce darnel?
Darnel is pronounced /ˈdɑːnəɫ/ (UK).
What is the plural of darnel?
The plural of darnel is darnels.

Words near darnel in the dictionary

  1. darnder
  2. darndest
  3. darned
  4. darneder
  5. darnedest
  6. darnel
  7. Darnell
  8. darnels
  9. darner
  10. darners
  11. darnest

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: darnel (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-darnel2.wav.

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