straw

Meanings

Noun

• A dried stalk of a cereal plant.
• Such dried stalks considered collectively; this bulk matter may be a chief salable product, a by-product, fodder, bedding, or green manure, depending on region and on current market conditions.
• A drinking straw.
• A pale, yellowish beige colour, like that of a dried straw.
• Anything proverbially worthless; the least possible thing.

Adjective

• Made of straw.
• Of a pale, yellowish beige colour, like that of a dried straw.
• Imaginary, but presented as real.

Verb

• To lay straw around plants to protect them from frost.
• To sell straws on the streets in order to cover the giving to the purchaser of things usually banned, such as pornography.

Origin

• From Middle English straw, from Old English strēaw, from Proto-West Germanic *strau, from Proto-Germanic *strawą ("that which is strewn"). Cognate with Dutch stro, Walloon strin, German Stroh, Norwegian and Swedish strå, Albanian shtrohë ("kennel").