mushrooms

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of mushroom.

   Wild mushrooms sprouted across the damp forest floor overnight.

   The chef sliced several mushrooms for the risotto.

   Note

   A regular plural that serves every sense of the noun: the fungi of the forest floor, the button mushrooms of the kitchen, the pegs on a bar-billiards table, the flared concrete columns that hold up a slab. The same spelling is also the verb of sudden growth. A determiner or adjective in front (wild mushrooms, the mushrooms) marks the noun. The word once named upstarts too, a figurative use now obsolete.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of mushroom.

   In good years, the town's population mushrooms as new families move in.

   Demand for the product mushrooms whenever a celebrity mentions it.

   Note

   Usually figurative, this form describes something swelling fast in size or scope, often with into. The verb takes no object: a problem mushrooms, but nobody mushrooms it. Literal uses survive alongside it. A forager mushrooms, a cloud mushrooms into its cap, and a bullet mushrooms when it flattens against a soft target. Look for the singular subject first, since that is what separates it from the plural noun.

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