broom

Pluralbrooms

Formsbrooms, brooming, broomed

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A household tool with fibers bound together at the end of a long handle, used for sweeping floors and other surfaces.

   He reached for the broom to clear the broken glass off the floor.

   After the party, two brooms made quick work of the confetti.

   Note

   The tool is named for the plant it was first made from. Old English brōm meant "brushwood," and the stiff, thin branches of the yellow-flowered shrub were bound together to sweep with. The handle is the broomstick, and the bundled head once had a name of its own, bavin. Through the same ancient root, broom is a distant relative of brim and brink.

2. 2
   verbtransitive or intransitive

   To clean a floor or surface by sweeping it with a broom.

   Sweepers broom the platform every night after the last train.

   She broomed steadily down the long corridor.

   Similarsweep

   Note

   A verb made straight from the noun, it works with or without an object. Dickens has a servant "brooming the front of the stables," and Thackeray has Molly "brooming the steps." Opal Whiteley turns it back into a noun: "I gave the floor a good brooming." No actual broom is required. In Will Hobbs's Far North (1997), a dirt floor is broomed clean with spruce branches.

3. 3
   nouncountable or uncountable

   Any of several yellow-flowered shrubs of the pea family, with long, stiff, thin branches and few leaves, traditionally used to make sweeping tools.

   Wild broom spread across the dry slopes, painting them gold each spring.

   Gardeners often cut back the broom once it finishes flowering.

   Note

   Brambles hide in the history of the plant name. Its West Germanic ancestor meant "bramble," and Dutch braam and German Low German Braam are its cousins. As a mass noun, broom names the scrub itself: a 1949 note on the Festiniog and Welsh Highland Railways complains that "broom and brambles" had made the line impassable. Counted, brooms are kinds of the shrub.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   In curling, the brush players use to sweep the ice ahead of a moving stone.

   The skip shouted instructions as her teammates worked the broom along the stone's path.

   Modern brooms use synthetic pads instead of corn fibers.

   Similarbrush

   Note

   Curling borrowed the household tool and gave it a job on the ice. Players sweep just ahead of a moving stone so that it slides farther and curls less. Left unswept, the stone slows and bends. The same implement also goes by the name sweeper, and in this sport the broom steers rather than cleans.

5. 5
   nouncountable or uncountable

   Any of several yellow-flowered, broom-like shrubs that are not closely related to the true brooms of tribe Genisteae.

   The yellow broom along the riverbank belongs to a family quite distinct from the Genisteae brooms.

   Despite the shared name, this broom flowers from an entirely separate lineage of shrubs.

6. 6
   nouncountable or uncountable

   Any of several yellow-flowered broom shrubs of tribe Genisteae, including the genera Cytisus, Genista, and Spartium.

   The broom of the genus Genista is common across Mediterranean hillsides.

   Beekeepers value broom for the early nectar its flowers provide.

   Note

   The name sits most firmly on one tribe, the Genisteae, with its genera Cytisus, Genista and Spartium. Shakespeare's The Tempest gives these shrubs a romantic setting in "thy broom groves, whose shadow the dismissed bachelor loves, being lass-lorn," a place for a rejected lover to sulk. Shrubs called broom outside this tribe are look-alikes from other lineages.

7. 7
   verbfigurativelytransitive

   To get rid of someone (such as firing an employee or breaking up with a partner) by sweeping them out of one's life.

   When the company restructured, they broomed three senior directors overnight.

   He threatened to broom anyone who questioned his decisions.

   Similarfire, sack, oust, dump, ditch

   Note

   Here the sweeping is aimed at people. Willem Dafoe, as Norman Osborn in Spider-Man (2002), tells his son to "broom her fast." Much of the word's punch comes from its rhyme with groom, which Jeffrey J. Fox's How to Become a Great Boss (2002) plays on: groom able people and you won't have to broom them. The tone is blunt and dismissive.

8. 8
   interjection

   Alternative form of brrm, imitating the sound of a car engine.

   Broom broom! the children shouted, steering their cars around the bend.

   He puffed his cheeks and made a low broom for the engine.

   Note

   Engine noise in nursery language: brrm, respelled here, is a childish imitation of a car, and it is nearly always doubled, as in "I'm in me mum's car, broom broom." It has nothing to do with sweeping, and the spelling only happens to coincide with the household word. Keep it for play, jokes and talk with small children.

9. 9
   nounslangcountable or uncountable

   A firearm, especially a shotgun.

   The gang stashed a sawed-off broom in the trunk before the heist.

   I just got the drop, there is an opp OFB step with the broom

   2017, OFB (RV, Kash

   Similargun, firearm, piece, iron, gat

   Note

   A rare slang name for a gun that lives mostly in rap lyrics. OFB's "Loyal" (2017) speaks of meeting a rival with one. Its near-rhyme synonym boomstick sharpens the image, and Yanko's "Next Up" (2019) jokes that a man forced to hold one recalls Cinderella. Outside that setting, listeners will simply hear the sweeping tool.

10. 10
    verbtransitive

    To smooth a roofing membrane with a broom or squeegee so it sits firmly against the adhesive beneath it.

    The crew broomed each section to lock it onto the adhesive.

    Always broom the sheet before the glue begins to set.

    Similarsmooth

    Note

    On a roof the broom presses rather than cleans. Working a freshly laid membrane with a broom or squeegee pushes out trapped air and beds the sheet firmly into the adhesive below, a step roofers call embedment. The object of the verb is the membrane or the section being laid, so you broom the sheet, not the roof.

11. 11
    verb

    Alternative form of bream (“to clean a ship's bottom”).

    The shipwrights broom the hull, burning away barnacles and weed.

    Crews must broom the bottom regularly to keep the ship swift.

    Note

    Shipwrights' work lies behind this spelling, which is a variant of bream, a separate word from the household one. A fouled hull was cleaned by fire and scraping, burning off clinging shells and seaweed, with no sweeping involved despite the everyday verb. The past tense is broomed. Beware of bream itself, which also names a freshwater fish.

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