weed

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.

Ellipsis of duckweed.

Underbrush; low shrubs.

one rushing forth out of the thickest weed

A wild and wanton pard[…]/ Crouched fawning in the weed.

A drug or the like made from the leaves of a plant.

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.

A drug or the like made from the leaves of a plant.

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 Bindweed, (Convolvulus) and all the small Poppies, remain in the field.

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.

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.

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.

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!

Clothing collectively; clothes, dress.

His mother o'er her barm-cloth wide / Gazed forward somewhat timidly / The new-comer's bright weed to see.

An article of dress worn in token of grief; a mourning garment or badge.

He wore a weed on his hat.

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; […]

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 at once, and thrust from things of dearest necessity, because their conscience could not assent to things which the Bishops thought indifferent.

Poor Girl! put on thy stifling widow’s weed, / And ’scape at once from Hope’s accursed bands; […]