Word.ws English Dictionary

weed

/wiːd/

weed noun: any plant unwanted at the place where and at the time when it is growing. Also the ellipsis of duckweed.

weed: any plant unwanted at the place where and at the time when it is growing
Image: Naberacka, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

weed (countable and uncountable, plural weeds)

  1. (countable) Any plant unwanted at the place where and at the time when it is growing.
    • If it isn't in a straight line or marked with a label, it's a weed.
    • The hovel stood in the centre of what had once been a vegetable garden, but was now a patch of rank weeds. Surrounding this, almost like a zareba, was an irregular ring of gorse and brambles, an unclaimed vestige of the original common.1944, Miles Burton, chapter 5, in The Three Corpse Trick
  2. (archaic, obsolete, uncountable) Underbrush; low shrubs.
    • one rushing forth out of the thickest weed1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 4
    • A wild and wanton pard[…]/ Crouched fawning in the weed.1842, Alfred Tennyson, “Œnone”, in Poems. […], volume I, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 128
  3. (informal, uncountable) Cannabis.
    • Hold up, hey / For my niggas who be actin' too bold, take a seat / Hope you ready for the next episode / Hey, hey, hey, hey / Smoke weed every day1999, Dr. Dre, “The Next Episode”, in 2001
    • And I predict you will laugh harder than ever. I’m not saying I’m any funnier. I’m saying weed is now legal in D.C.2015 March 14, Barack Obama, Remarks by the President at the 2015 Gridiron Dinner
  4. (colloquial, uncountable) Tobacco.
  5. (colloquial, countable, obsolete) A cigar.
    • "If ever you smoke, my dear aunt (and I am told that many women take a quiet weed under the rose), be very careful how you choose your cigars."1862, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley's Secret
  6. (countable) A weak horse, which is therefore unfit to breed from.
  7. (UK, countable, informal) A puny person; one who has little physical strength.
  8. (countable, figuratively) Something unprofitable or troublesome; anything useless.

Verb

weed (third-person singular simple present weeds, present participle weeding, simple past and past participle weeded)

  1. (transitive) To remove unwanted vegetation from a cultivated area (especially grass).
    • I weeded my flower bed.
    • If these plants are young, the weeders do not see them; and in this case, when they grow larger, the land must be again weeded. But the small plants, which are not less prejudicial, such as the wild Fitch, the wild Oat, Darnel, Fennel-flower, Knot-grass, Restharrow, Fox-tail, the several sorts of...1764, Duhamel du Monceau, translated by Philip Miller, The Elements of Agriculture, volume 1, page 265
  2. (figuratively, transitive) To pilfer the best items from a collection.
    • She now regretted much having had the case taken to the duke's, for surely it might have been weeded to very good purpose, and no one the wiser.1842, [anonymous collaborator of Letitia Elizabeth Landon], chapter XXXVIII, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 183
  3. (transitive, library science) To systematically remove materials from a library collection based on a set of criteria.
    • We usually weed romance novels that haven't circulated in over a year.
    • Librarians overwhelmingly believe that weeding increases use of books and patron satisfaction.2003, Juris Dilevko, Lisa Gottlieb, “Weed to achieve: a fundamental part of the public library mission?”, in Library Collections, Acquisitions, and Technical Services, volume 27, number 1, →DOI, page...

Noun (2)

weed (plural weeds)

  1. (archaic) A garment or piece of clothing.
    • Lie here ye weedes that I diſdaine to weare,
      This compleat armor, and this curtle-axe
      Are adiuncts more beſeeming Tamburlaine.c. 1587–1588 (date written), [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC...
    • Prince [Don Pedro] Come let vs hence, and put on other weedes, / And then to Leonatoes we will goe. / Claudio And Hymen now with luckier iſſue ſpeeds, / Then this for whom we rendred vp this woe.
      Than this for whom we rend'red up this woe!1598–1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, Much Adoe about Nothing. […], quarto edition, London: […] V[alentine] S[immes] for Andrew Wise, and William Aspley, published 1600, →OCLC, [Act V...
  2. (archaic) Clothing collectively; clothes, dress.
    • His mother o'er her barm-cloth wide / Gazed forward somewhat timidly / The new-comer's bright weed to see.1870, William Morris, “September: The Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon”, in The Earthly Paradise: A Poem, part III, London: F[rederick] S[tartridge] Ellis, […], →OCLC, page 80
  3. (archaic) An article of dress worn in token of grief; a mourning garment or badge.
    • He wore a weed on his hat.
  4. (archaic) A hatband.
    • […] he was beat and retreated back to his old encampment with his weed on his hat dragging on the ground, with the loss of more than nineteen hundred men; […]1888, Duane Hamilton Hurd, History of Essex County, Massachusetts, page 1183
  5. (archaic) Especially in the plural as widow's weeds: (female) mourning apparel.
    • O Sir, if we could but see the shape of our deare Mother England, as poets are wont to give a personal form to what they please, how would she appeare, think ye, but in a mourning weed, with ashes upon her head, and tears abundantly flowing from her eyes, to behold so many of her children expos'd...1641 May, John Milton, “The Second Book”, in Of Reformation Touching Church-Discipline in England: And the Causes that hitherto have Hindred it. […], [London]: […] Thomas Vnderhill, →OCLC...
    • Poor Girl! put on thy stifling widow’s weed, / And ’scape at once from Hope’s accursed bands; […]1820, John Keats, “Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil. A Story from Boccaccio.”, in Lamia, Isabella, the Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems, London: […] [Thomas Davison] for Taylor and Hessey, […], →OCLC...

Noun (3)

weed (countable and uncountable, plural weeds)

  1. (Scotland) A sudden illness or relapse, often attended with fever, which befalls those who are about to give birth, are giving birth, or have recently given birth or miscarried or aborted.
    • The patient […] aborted between the second and third month; […] felt herself so well on the second day after, that she went to the washing-green; and, on her return home in the evening, was seized with a violent rigor, which, by herself and those around her, was considered as the forerunner of a...1822, William Campbell, “Observations on the Disease usually termed Puerperal Fever, with Cases”, in The Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, volume 18
  2. (Scotland) Lymphangitis in a horse.

Proper noun capitalized: Weed

Weed

  1. A city in Siskiyou County, California, United States.
  2. A surname.

Also used as

weed is also the ellipsis of duckweed.

weed is also the simple past and past participle of wee.

weed meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

weed in Hindi

unwanted plant
खरपतवार kharpatvār
slang: marijuana
गांजा gāñjā

weed in Tamil

unwanted plant
களை kaḷai
to remove weeds from
களையெடு kaḷaiyeṭu

weed in Marathi

तण

weed in Urdu

گھاس پھوس, گھاس پھوسی
More languagesFewer languages
weed in Bengali
গাঁজা gãja
weed in Telugu
కలుపు kalupu
weed in Malayalam
കള
weed in Kannada
ಕಳೆ, ಕಳೆಗೆ
weed in Nepali
झार jhār
weed in Tagalog
hilamon, lamon, damo, gamasin
weed in Arabic
عُشْبَة ضَارَّة ʕušba ḍārra, بانْجو bānjū, حَشيش ḥašīš
weed in Malay
rumpai
weed in Indonesian
rumput liar
weed in Persian
علف هرز 'alaf-e harz, هرز واش harz-vâš, گراس gerâs, گرس gerass
weed in Thai
วัชพืช wát-chá-pʉ̂ʉt
weed in Vietnamese
cỏ dại, làm cỏ

Examples of weed in a sentence

  • Some of the weeds that cause an undesirable flavor in milk are: onion, tarweed, scaleweed, garlic, mustard, pepper grass.1944, Oregon. Agricultural experiment station, Circular of Information - Issues 323-395, page 3:
  • Everything was choked with weeds and scutch grass, but the outlines of bed and drill were still there.1993, John Banville, Ghosts:
  • If these plants are young, the weeders do not see them; and in this case, when they grow larger, the land must be again weeded.1764, Duhamel du Monceau, translated by Philip Miller, The Elements of Agriculture, volume 1, page 265:
  • As a van passed by blaring patriotic hymns from the oversize speakers on its roof, she weeded the riverbank.2017 December 17, Kee B. Park, “Amid Talk of Nuclear Weapons, North Koreans Go Hungry”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from...

All 40 example sentences with weed

Synonyms of weed

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of weed

Forms of weed

Noun
pluralweeds
Verb
third-person singular presentweeds
present participleweeding
past participleweeded
pastweeded

Plural of weed: weeds

Origin of weed

From Middle English weed, weod, from Old English wēod (“weed”), from Proto-West Germanic *weud (“weed”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian Jood (“weed”), West Frisian wjûd (“weed”), Dutch wied (“unwanted plant, weed”), German Low German Weed (“weed”), Old High German wiota (“fern”). See also woad.

From Middle English weeden, weden, from Old English wēodian (“to weed”), from Proto-Germanic *weudōną (“to uproot, weed”). Cognate with West Frisian wjûde, wjudde (“to weed”), Dutch wieden (“to weed”), German Low German weden (“to weed”).

From Middle English wede, from Old English wǣd (“dress, attire, clothing, garment”), from Proto-Germanic *wēdiz, from which also wad, wadmal. Cognate with Dutch lijnwaad, Dutch gewaad, German Wat.

Words formed from weed

Phrases with weed

66 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with weed

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about weed

What does weed mean?
Weed means any plant unwanted at the place where and at the time when it is growing.
What is weed in Hindi?
Weed in Hindi is खरपतवार (kharpatvār), गांजा (gāñjā). See Weed meaning in Hindi.
How do you use weed in a sentence?
Some of the weeds that cause an undesirable flavor in milk are: onion, tarweed, scaleweed, garlic, mustard, pepper grass.
What part of speech is weed?
Weed can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce weed?
Weed is pronounced /wiːd/.
What is the plural of weed?
The plural of weed is weeds.

Words near weed in the dictionary

  1. weeb
  2. weebill
  3. weebills
  4. weebs
  5. weeby
  6. weed
  7. weed brownie
  8. weed brownies
  9. Weed Day
  10. Weed Days
  11. weed eater

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: weed (page history and authors); Weed (page history and authors); weed (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); weed (Urdu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); weed (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); weed (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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: en-us-weed.ogg.

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