Dictionary

quitchgrass en · NOUN

Etymology

From quitch + grass.

Meanings

1. (uncountable) A species of grass, Elymus repens.
   • If your Hops are old and ill-husbanded, or worn out of heart, then about the beginning of Winter dig about them, and take away as much of the old barren Earth as you can, and apply good fat Mould or Compost to their Roots: If you cannot do it so soon, do not neglect it longer than January, or February, if the Weather be open, such Winter-dressings being a principal Renewal of decayed Hops; it will likewise kill the Weeds, Quitchgrass, &c. 1708, John Mortimer, The Whole Art of Husbandry, Or, The Way of Managing and Improving Land, London, page 135:
   • 1888, Hawaiian Planters’ Monthly, Honolulu: Planters’ Labor and Supply Co., Volume VII, p. 486, […] the weed called honohono in Hawaiian, popularly known abroad as Quitchgrass—a weed which every planter in wet districts on our islands has been troubled with and found to be a costly enemy.
   • Other enemies, like the smaller weeds, he could overcome, but injustice, that quitch grass of life, was what stung him to fury. 1917, Hiram Alfred Cody, chapter 5, in Under Sealed Orders, Toronto: McClelland, Goodchild & Stewart, page 47:
   • 1840, Robert Browning, Sordello, Book IV, in Sordello; Strafford; Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1863, p. 112, The thoroughfares were overrun with weed — Docks, quitchgrass, loathly mallows no man plants.

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