broom

• enPR: bro͞om, bro͝om, IPA^(key): /bɹuːm/, /bɹʊm/

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• Rhymes: -ʊm, -uːm

From Middle English broom, from Old English brōm (“brushwood”), from Proto-Germanic *brēm- (“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.

broom (countable and uncountable, plural brooms)

1. (countable) A domestic utensil with fibers bound together at the end of a long handle, used for sweeping.
2. (countable, curling) An implement with which players sweep the ice to make a stone travel further and curl less; a sweeper.
3. Any of several yellow-flowered shrubs of the family Fabaceae, in the tribe Genisteae, including genera Cytisus, Genista, and Spartium, with long, thin branches and small or few leaves.
   • 1610, The Tempest, by William Shakespeare, act 4 scene 1:

     […] and thy broom groves,

     Whose shadow the dismissed bachelor loves,

     Being lass-lorn […]

• besom

broom (third-person singular simple present brooms, present participle brooming, simple past and past participle broomed)

1. (transitive, intransitive) To sweep with a broom.
   • 1855 September 29, Charles Dickens, "Model Officials", in Household Words: A Weekly Journal, Bradbury and Evens (1856), page 206:

     “ […] Sidi, I was busy in the exercise of my functions, occupied in brooming the front of the stables, when who should come but Hhamed Ould Denéï on horseback, at full gallop, as if he were going to break his neck. […] ”

   • a. 1857, William Makepeace Thackeray, Our Street, in Christmas Books: Mrs. Perkins's Ball, Our Street, Dr. Birch, Chapman & Hall (1857), Our Street page 8:

     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.

   • a. 1920, Opal Stanley Whiteley, The Story of Opal: The Journal of an Understanding Heart, Atlantic Monthly Press (1920), pages 58–59:

     After that I did take the broom from its place, and I gave the floor a good brooming. I broomed the boards up and down and cross-ways. There was not a speck of dirt on them left.

   • 1997, Will Hobbs, Far North (HarperCollins, →ISBN, page 100:

     We broomed the dirt floor clean with spruce branches, brought our gear inside, and moved in.

2. (roofing) To improve the embedding of a membrane by using a broom or squeegee to smooth it out and ensure contact with the adhesive under the membrane.

• For more examples of usage of this term, see Citations:broom.

broom (third-person singular simple present brooms, present participle brooming, simple past and past participle broomed)

1. (nautical) Alternative form of bream (to clean a ship's bottom)

• broom in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.

• Rombo, bromo, bromo-, ombro-

broom (uncountable)

1. bromine

• Rhymes: -oːm

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broom n (uncountable)

1. bromine

broom (genitive [please provide], partitive [please provide])

1. bromine

This noun needs an inflection-table template.