broom

CEFRB1

/bɹuːm/

noun

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    noun

    A brush with a long handle used for sweeping floors.

  2. 02

    noun

    Extra detail

    An implement with which players sweep the ice to make a stone travel further and curl less; a sweeper.

Examples

  • I need a new broom. This one's shot.

  • She sweeps the room with a broom.

At a glance

Sits at B1 on the CEFR scale

Senses
5
Parts of speech
1
Citations
5
Synonyms
5

Also pronounced

  • /bɹʊm/

Deep Dive

noun

Extra meanings

  1. Any of several yellow-flowered shrubs of the family Fabaceae, with long, stiff, thin branches and small or few leaves used for the domestic utensil.

  2. A domestic utensil with fibers bound together at the end of a long handle, used for sweeping.

  3. Especially, of the tribe Genisteae, including genera Cytisus, Genista, and Spartium.

More examples

In context

  • A new broom sweeps clean.

  • Meronyms: broomstick (handle), bavin (head)

  • It was but this morning at eight, when poor Molly, was brooming the steps, and the baker paying her by no means unmerited compliments, that my landlady came whirling out of the ground-floor front, and sent the poor girl whimpering into the kitchen.

Synonyms

Quick test

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Question 1 · Quick check

She swept the kitchen floor with a new blank.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Origin

noun

Inherited from Middle English brom, from Old English brōm (“brushwood”), from Proto-West Germanic *brām (“bramble”) (compare Saterland Frisian Brom, West Frisian brem, Dutch braam, German Low German Braam), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰrem-, from *bʰer- ‘edge’. Related to brim, brink. Replaced English besom (from Old English besma (“broom, rod”)), which is now restricted in meaning to a particular kind of broom. (shotgun): So called because it is (like the cleaning utensil) long and held similarly to a besom and “cleans” what is in front.