mushroom
/ˈmʌʃˌɹuːm/ noun, adjective, verb
Forms mushrooms mushrooming mushroomed
- noun Any of the fleshy fruiting bodies of fungi typically produced above ground on soil or on their food sources (such as decaying wood). “Some mushrooms are edible whereas others are poisonous, and sometimes they are difficult to tell apart.”
- noun A fungus producing such fruiting bodies.
- noun Champignon or Agaricus bisporus, the mushroom species most commonly used in cooking.
- noun Any of the mushroom-shaped pegs in bar billiards.
- noun (architecture) A concrete column with a thickened portion at the top, used to support a slab.
- noun (obsolete, figurative) One who rises suddenly from a low condition in life; an upstart.
- noun (figurative) Something that grows very quickly or seems to appear suddenly.
- adjective (attributive) Having characteristics like those of a mushroom, for example in shape or appearance, speed of growth, or texture. “mushroom cloud”
- verb (intransitive, figurative) To grow quickly to a large size or rapidly increase in scope or scale. “The town’s population mushroomed from 10,000 to 110,000 in five years.”
- verb (intransitive) To gather mushrooms. “We used to go mushrooming in the forest every weekend.”
- verb (intransitive) To form the shape of a mushroom.
- verb (ballistics, of a bullet) To form the shape of a mushroom when striking a soft target.
Synonyms
Antonyms
Etymology
From Middle English muscheron, musseron, from Anglo-Norman musherum, moscheron, from Old French moisseron, of obscure origin: probably derived from Old French mosse, moise ("moss"; whence also French mousse), as the use first applied to a type of fungus which grows in moss, from Frankish *mosu (“moss”) or Old Dutch *mosa (“moss”), akin to Old High German mosa (“moor, swamp”), Old High German mos (“moss, bog”), Old High German mios (“moss, mire”), Old English mēos (“moss”), Old English mōs (“bog, marsh”), Old Norse mosi (“moss”), Old Norse myrr (“bog, mire”), from Proto-Germanic *musą, *musô, *miuziz (“mosses, bog”), from Proto-Indo-European *mews- (“mosses, mold, mildew”). Displaced native Old English swamm. More at mire. Alternatively, the Old French may be of pre-Roman origin. See Ancient Greek μύκης (múkēs, “mushroom”). Doublet of moss and mousse.
Webster’s 1913
- noun (a) An edible fungus (Agaricus campestris), having a white stalk which bears a convex or oven flattish expanded portion called the pileus. This is whitish and silky or somewhat scaly above, and bears on the under side radiating gills which are at first flesh-colored, but gradually become brown. The plant grows in rich pastures and is proverbial for rapidity of growth and shortness of duration. It has a pleasant smell, and is largely used as food. It is also cultivated from spawn.
- noun One who rises suddenly from a low condition in life; an upstart.
- adjective Of or pertaining to mushrooms; as, mushroom catchup.
- adjective Resembling mushrooms in rapidity of growth and shortness of duration; short-lived; ephemerial; as, mushroom cities. Mushroom anchor, an anchor shaped like a mushroom, capable of grasping the ground in whatever way it falls.
Etymology [OE. muscheron, OF. mouscheron, F. mousseron; perhaps fr. mousse moss, of German origin. See Moss.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “mushroom”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details