chickweed
/ˈtʃɪkwiːd/ noun
Forms chickweeds chick-weed
- noun especially common chickweed (Stellaria media), a common, edible weed in North America and Europe.
- noun Stellaria pro parte
- noun Cerastium (mouse-ear chickweed)
- noun Ageratum conyzoides
- noun Holosteum (jagged chickweed)
- noun Moenchia (upright chickweed)
- noun Paronychia spp. (nailwort, whitlow-wort)
Synonyms
mouse-ear chickweed mouse eared chickweed mouse ear clammy chickweed
Etymology
From Middle English chykwed, chykewode, chike wed, chikewed, chekwede, a variant of chykynwede, chekyn-wede, cheken-wede (literally “chicken-weed”), equivalent to chick + weed.
Etymonline claims the name was apparently applied to many plants fit for chicken feed, which were called in Old English cicene mete (“chicken food”).
Webster’s 1913
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “chickweed”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details