Dictionary Definition
grass
Noun
1 narrow-leaved green herbage: grown as lawns;
used as pasture for grazing animals; cut and dried as hay
2 German writer of novels and poetry and plays
(born 1927) [syn: Gunter
Grass, Gunter
Wilhelm Grass]
4 street names for marijuana [syn: pot, green
goddess, dope, weed, gage, sess, sens, smoke, skunk, locoweed, Mary
Jane]
Verb
1 shoot down, of birds
2 cover with grass; "The owners decided to grass
their property"
3 spread out clothes on the grass to let it dry
and bleach
4 cover with grass [syn: grass
over]
5 feed with grass
6 give away information about somebody; "He told
on his classmate who had cheated on the exam" [syn: denounce, tell on, betray, give away,
rat, shit, shop, snitch, stag]
User Contributed Dictionary
English
Extensive Definition
Grass is a common word that
generally describes a monocotyledonous green
plant in the family
Gramineae (Poaceae). True
grasses include most plants grown as grains, for pasture, and for lawns (turf). They include some more
specialised crops such as lemongrass, as well as many
ornamental
plants. They also include plants often not recognized to be
grasses, such as bamboos
or some species of weeds
called crab
grass.
Use of the term
The term grass is often used to describe related plants in the rush (Juncaceae) and sedge (Cyperaceae) families, that somewhat resemble grass. It may also be used to describe completely unrelated plants, sometimes of similar appearances to grass, with leaves rising vertically from the ground, and sometimes of dissimilar appearance. The term came about in the early 15th century, from the Old English græs, derived from the same root as "grow". A single piece of grass is called a blade.Importance
Grass is also used in several
contexts in sports, most
notably with sports played on fields such as football,
cricket, baseball, and rugby. In
some sports facilities, including indoor domes and places where
maintenance of a grass field would be difficult, grass may be
replaced with artificial
turf, a synthetic grass-like substitute. Sports such as
cricket, golf and tennis are particularly dependent
on the quality of the grass on which the sport is
played.
A cricket pitch often starts
with a thin cover of green blades, but over the course of a
five-day match tends to dry out and harden. Even in one-day matches
cricket pitches are often nearly bare earth covered only by a layer
of dry yellow stalks. A green or moist pitch favours the bowler, as
it varies the bounce of the ball and increases its movement. A
hard, dry pitch gives a more predictable, higher bounce which
favours the batsman. The nature of the outfield is also important,
as grass may slow down a ball, causing it to stop before reaching a
boundary or allowing a fielder more time to gather the ball. Laws
10 and 11 of cricket detail maintenance and protection of the
pitch. Unlike test cricket
and One
Day International, indoor
cricket is played on an artificial surface.
In tennis, grass is grown on
very hard-packed soil, and bounces may vary depending on the
grass's health, how recently it has been mowed, and the wear and
tear of recent play. The most famous grass tennis court in the
world is Centre Court at Wimbledon.
But tennis is usually played on clay courts, and only a few regular
tennis tournaments are played on grass. The surface is softer than
hard courts, so the ball bounces lower, and players must reach the
ball faster. Grass courts are now rare as they must be watered and
mowed often, and take longer to dry after rain than hard
courts.
Golf, on the other hand, is
usually played on grass, and is dependent on the maintenance of a
very large area of well-cut grass. Grass on golf courses is kept in
three distinct conditions: that of the rough, the fairway, and the
putting green. Grass on the fairway is short and even, allowing the
player to cleanly strike the ball. Playing from the rough is a
disadvantage because the grass is generally much longer, which may
affect the flight of the ball. Grass on the putting green is the
shortest and most even, ideally allowing the ball to slide smoothly
over the surface. An entire industry revolves around the
development and marketing of grasses for golf courses.
In fiction
Grass plays a central role in two important science fiction catastrophe novels from the 1940s and 1950s, Ward Moore's Greener Than You Think, in which the world is slowly taken over by unstoppable Bermuda Grass, John Christopher's The Death of Grass, in which a plague that kills off all forms of grass threatens the survival of the human species.See also
Gallery
Footnotes
References
- Chapman, G.P. and W.E. Peat. 1992. An Introduction to the Grasses. CAB Internat., Oxon, UK.
- Cheplick, G.P. 1998. Population Biology of Grasses. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
- Milne, L. and M. Milne. 1967. Living Plants of the World. Chaticleer Press, N.Y.
- Soderstrom, T.R., K.W. Hilu, C.S. Campbell, and M.E. Barkworth, eds. 1987. Grass Systematics and Evolution. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C.
- Went, Frits W. 1963. The Plants. Time-Life Books, N.Y.
External links
grass in Samogitian:
Žuolė
grass in Bulgarian:
Трева
grass in German:
Gras
grass in Modern Greek
(1453-): Χόρτα
grass in Spanish:
Césped
grass in Finnish:
Ruoho
grass in French:
Herbe
grass in Hebrew:
דשא
grass in Italian: Erba
(botanica)
grass in Lithuanian:
Žolė
grass in Dutch: Gras
(uiteenzetting)
grass in Russian:
Трава
grass in Ukrainian:
Трава
Synonyms, Antonyms and Related Words
Bengal grass, DET, DMT, English rye grass, Italian rye
grass, Kentucky bluegrass, LSD, Mary Jane, STP, THC, acid, aftergrass, alfilaria, antidepressant, ataractic, bamboo, barley, beach grass, beard grass,
bent, bent grass, betray, black bent, bluegrass, board, bog grass, boo, bread, buckwheat, buffalo grass,
bulrush, bunch grass,
campo, canary grass,
cane, cannabis, cereal, cereal plant, corn, cotton grass, crab grass,
diethyltryptamine,
dimethyltryptamine,
dine, farinaceous plant,
feather grass, feed,
flyaway grass, fodder,
fog, forage, forage grass, four-leaved
grass, gage, ganja, give away, grain, graminaceous plant, grass
veld, grasses, grassland, gratify, graze, grazing, hallucinogen, hash, hashish, hassock grass, haugh, haughland, hay, hemp, horsetail, inform, informer, joint, kava, lawn grass, lea, little quaking grass, llano, lovegrass, maize, marijuana, mead, meadow, meadow fescue, meadow
foxtail, meadow grass, meadow land, meat, mescal, mescal bean, mescal
button, mescaline,
mess, millet, mind-altering drug,
mind-blowing drug, mind-expanding drug, morning glory seeds, myrtle
grass, nark, oats, ornamental grass, paddy, palm-leaved grass, pampa, pampas, pampas grass, papyrus, park, pasturage, pasture, pasture land, peach, peppergrass, peyote, pot, prairie, provision, psilocin, psilocybin, psychedelic, psychic
energizer, psychoactive drug, psychochemical, psychotomimetic,
range, rat, reed, reefer, regale, ribbon grass, rice, roach, rush, rye, satisfy, savanna, scutch, sedge, sell out, sesame, sesame grass, snitch, sorghum, squeak, squeal, squealer, steppe, steppeland, stick, stoolie, striped grass, sugar
cane, sustain, swale, switch grass, sword grass,
tattle, tea, traitor, tranquilizer, tufted hair
grass, vega, veld, weed, wheat, wild oats, wine and dine,
wire grass, woolly beard grass, worm grass, zebra grass, zoysia