broom

• enPR: bro͞om, bro͝om, IPA^(key): /bɹuːm/, /bɹʊm/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ʊm, -uːm
• Homophone: brume

Inherited from Middle English brom, from Old English brōm (“brushwood”), from Proto-West Germanic *brām (“bramble”) (compare Saterland Frisian Brom, West Frisian brem, Dutch braam, German Low German Braam), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰrem-, from *bʰer- ‘edge’. Related to brim, brink.

Replaced English besom (from Old English besma (“broom, rod”)), which is now restricted in meaning to a particular kind of broom.

(shotgun): So called because it is (like the cleaning utensil) long and held similarly to a besom and “cleans” what is in front.

broom (countable and uncountable, plural brooms)

2. (countable) A domestic utensil with fibers bound together at the end of a long handle, used for sweeping.

   Hypernyms: utensil; tool

   Hyponyms: push broom; witch's besom < besom

   Meronyms: broomstick (handle), bavin (head)

4. (countable, curling) An implement with which players sweep the ice to make a stone travel further and curl less; a sweeper.
6. Any of several yellow-flowered shrubs of the family Fabaceae, with long, stiff, thin branches and small or few leaves used for the domestic utensil.
   • 1949 November and December, “Notes and News: Festiniog and Welsh Highland Railways”, in Railway Magazine, page 408:

     At the same time, the encroachment of vegetation proceeds apace, and broom and brambles have already made portions of the line impassable, even on foot.

   2. Especially, of the tribe Genisteae, including genera Cytisus, Genista, and Spartium.
      • 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene i]:

        […] and thy broom groves,
        Whose shadow the dismissed bachelor loves,
        Being lass-lorn […]

   4. Of plants not closely related to those of tribe Genisteae.
8. (slang, rare) A firearm; especially, a shotgun.

   Synonyms: broomstick, boomstick; see also Thesaurus:firearm

   Hyponyms: trench broom; see also Thesaurus:firearm

   • 2015 September 26, Ms. Hustle (lyricist), Ms. Hustle vs. O’fficial (Summer Madness; 5)‎^[1], Ultimate Rap League, from 48:07–48:28:

     So keep talking all that fly shit, and I’ma grab the tool
     And the lead will get stuck in your head like a catchy tune
     Soon as I look down on a target, bitch, your ass is doomed
     Trust exercise with Ahdi, arms out to catch a boom
     You see this sweeper I got, it ain’t your average broom
     This ring will wet this bitch like a happy groom

   • 2017 July 17, OFB (RV, Kash, Lowkey, Headie One, Bradz & Tuggzy), “Loyal”‎^[2], 2:45–2:47:

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

   • 2019 September 11, Yanko, “Next Up”, in #ACGK‎^[3], 1:59:

     He got forced to hold that broom, that dickhead reminds me of Cinderella

   • 2020 July 2, “Stop Check”, LR of TPL (lyrics)‎^[4]:

     Pull up to the 🎵 get whacked with the broom
     TT liz on my line, so you know it got moved
     Distribute, click, click, shoot
     That's another face on frontline news

   • 2020 July 3, “Lightwork Freestyle”, Y.CB of 7th (lyrics)‎^[5]:

     Back that strap then blaze, fry man
     Tell bro “make sure you twos that yute”
     Rise that stick when the street needs cleaning
     The pigs know this ain't no average broom

   • 2020 October 23, “Talk Bout Hollows”, DBF MD (lyrics), 0:30–0:33:

     If F’s in the room
     step with the broom
     finna here a boom with a boom!

• Tok Pisin: brum
• → Chinook Jargon: bloom

broom (third-person singular simple present brooms, present participle brooming, simple past and past participle broomed)

1. (transitive, intransitive) To sweep with a broom.
   • 1855 September 29, Charles Dickens, "Model Officials", in Household Words: A Weekly Journal, Bradbury and Evens (1856), page 206:

     “ […] Sidi, I was busy in the exercise of my functions, occupied in brooming the front of the stables, when who should come but Hhamed Ould Denéï on horseback, at full gallop, as if he were going to break his neck. […] ”

   • a. 1857, William Makepeace Thackeray, Our Street, in Christmas Books: Mrs. Perkins's Ball, Our Street, Dr. Birch, Chapman & Hall (1857), Our Street page 8:

     It was but this morning at eight, when poor Molly, was brooming the steps, and the baker paying her by no means unmerited compliments, that my landlady came whirling out of the ground-floor front, and sent the poor girl whimpering into the kitchen.

   • a. 1920, Opal Stanley Whiteley, The Story of Opal: The Journal of an Understanding Heart, Atlantic Monthly Press (1920), pages 58–59:

     After that I did take the broom from its place, and I gave the floor a good brooming. I broomed the boards up and down and cross-ways. There was not a speck of dirt on them left.

   • 1997, Will Hobbs, Far North, HarperCollins, →ISBN, page 100:

     We broomed the dirt floor clean with spruce branches, brought our gear inside, and moved in.

2. (roofing) To improve the embedding of a membrane by using a broom or squeegee to smooth it out and ensure contact with the adhesive under the membrane.
3. (figurative) To get rid of someone, like firing an employee or breaking up with a girlfriend, to sweep another out of one's life.
   • April 2002 Willem Dafoe as Norman Osborn, speaking to his son Harry, in the film "Spider-Man"

     A word to the "not-so-wise" about your girlfriend. Do what you need to with her, then broom her fast.

   • August 2002 Jeffrey J. Fox How to Become a Great Boss: The Rules for Getting and Keeping the Best Employees page 15

     let the employee leave on his own, or the boss must broom him. If you hire, or inherit, able people, and you groom them, you won't have to broom them. Groom, broom, and watch your company zoom.

   • 2012, George Stevens Jr., Conversations at the American Film Institute with the Great Moviemakers: The Next Generation, page 204:

     I still was going to go with Breslin until one day he said to me, "I got a confession to make to you. When my mother died on her deathbed I promised her I'd never drive a car and I still don't know how to drive a car." I figured for this picture you have to drive a car, so I just decided to broom him and go with an actor.

• For more quotations using this term, see Citations:broom.

broom (third-person singular simple present brooms, present participle brooming, simple past and past participle broomed)

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

• “broom”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

broom

1. Alternative form of brrm (“sound of a car engine”) (often used reduplicatively)

   I'm in me mum's car, broom broom

• boom

• “broom”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

• Rombo, bromo, bromo-, ombro-

• Audio:

  (file)

broom (uncountable)

1. bromine

• halogeen

Borrowed from French brome. Coined by Antoine-Jérôme Balard.

• IPA^(key): /broːm/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Hyphenation: broom
• Rhymes: -oːm

broom n (uncountable, no diminutive)

1. bromine [from mid-19th c.]

   Synonym: bromium

German Brom.

broom (genitive broomi, partitive broomi)

1. bromine

• “broom”, in [EKSS] Eesti keele seletav sõnaraamat [Descriptive Dictionary of the Estonian Language] (in Estonian) (online version), Tallinn: Eesti Keele Sihtasutus (Estonian Language Foundation), 2009
• broom in Sõnaveeb (Eesti Keele Instituut)

broom

1. alternative form of brom