/stɹɔː/, /stɹɔ/, /stɹɑ/
OriginFrom Middle English straw, from Old English strēaw, from Proto-West Germanic *strau, from Proto-Germanic *strawą (“that which is strewn, straw”), from Proto-Indo-European *strew- (“to spread around, strew”).
Cognate with Saterland Frisian Sträi (“straw”), West Frisian strie (“straw”), Dutch stro (“straw”), German Low German Stroh (“straw”), German Stroh (“straw”), Danish, Norwegian and Swedish strå (“straw”), Icelandic strá (“straw”), Walloon strin, Albanian shtrohë (“kennel”).
- countableA dried stalk of a cereal plant.
- uncountableSuch dried stalks considered collectively; this bulk matter may be a chief salable product, a by-product, fodder, bedding, or green manure, depending on region and on current market conditions.
- countableA drinking straw.
- countable, uncommon, uncountableA pale, yellowish beige colour, like that of a dried straw.
- countable, figuratively, uncountableAnything proverbially worthless; the least possible thing.
“to not care a straw” — to not care at all
“‘For thy sword and thy bow I care not a straw,
Nor all thine arrows to boot;
If I get a knop upon thy bare scop,
Thou canst as well shite as shoote.’”
“He also decided, which was more to his purpose, that Eleanor did not care a straw for him, and that very probably she did care a straw for his rival.”
- countable, uncountableA straw owner.
“The Bromfield Street offices were housed in a dilapidated but heavily-insured building, owned by a straw for a wealthy downtown real estate developer, surrounded by expensive new commercial developmen”
- not-comparableMade of straw.
- not-comparableOf a pale, yellowish beige colour, like that of a dried straw.
- figuratively, not-comparableImaginary, but presented as real.
“A straw enemy built up in the media to seem like a real threat, which then collapses like a balloon.”
- To lay straw around plants to protect them from frost.
- obsolete, slangTo sell straws on the streets in order to cover the giving to the purchaser of things usually banned, such as pornography.
“It was the custom for the disaffected of those days to make known their grievances by distributing papers on doors of public buildings, and even strawing them in the high way, for the benefit of the c”
“I have already alluded to "strawing," which can hardly be described as quackery. It is rather a piece of mountebankery. […] The strawer offers to sell any passer by in the streets a straw and give the”
“Forasmoche as there be diverse lewd and sedicious [folks] personnes [being so given to sedicon as they care not f] whiche do labor nowe to mayntain the traitorous doings of the duke of Somerset, and f”
- A surname transferred from the nickname.
Formsstraws(plural) · straws(present, singular, third-person) · strawing(participle, present) · strawed(participle, past) · strawed(past)