grass

Meanings

Noun

• Any plant of the family Poaceae, characterized by leaves that arise from nodes in the stem and leaf bases that wrap around the stem, especially those grown as ground cover rather than for grain.
• Various plants not in family Poaceae that resemble grasses.
• A lawn.
• Marijuana.
• An informer, police informer; one who betrays a group (of criminals, etc) to the authorities.
• Sharp, closely spaced discontinuities in the trace of a cathode-ray tube, produced by random interference.
• Noise on an A-scope or similar type of radar display.
• The season of fresh grass; spring or summer.
• That which is transitory.
• Asparagus; "sparrowgrass".
• The surface of a mine.

Verb

• To lay out on the grass; to knock down (an opponent etc.).
• To act as a grass or informer, to betray; to report on (criminals etc) to the authorities.
• To cover with grass or with turf.
• To feed with grass.
• To expose, as flax, on the grass for bleaching, etc.
• To bring to the grass or ground; to land.

Origin

• From Middle English gras, gres, gers, from Old English græs, gærs, from Proto-West Germanic *gras, from Proto-Germanic *grasą ("grass"), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰreh₁- ("to grow").
• Cognate with Scots girs, gers, gress, North Frisian gäärs, geers, Saterland Frisian Gäärs ("grass"), West Frisian gers ("grass"), Low German Gras ("grass"), Dutch gras ("grass, turf, pasture"), German Gras ("grass, weed"), Danish græs ("grass"), Swedish gräs ("grass"), Norwegian Bokmål gress ("grass"), Faroese, Icelandic and Norwegian Nynorsk gras ("grass"), Latin herba ("plant, weed, grass"), Albanian grath ("grass blade, spike"). Related to grow, green.
• The "informer" sense is probably a shortening of grasshopper, rhyming slang for copper or shopper (the exact sequence of derivation is unclear).