Windlestraw
noun
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 A grass used for making ropes or for plaiting, especially Apera spica-venti. Scotland, UK, countable, dialectal, uncountable
"Grey rocks did peep from the square moss, and stemmed / The struggling brook: tall spires of windlestrae / Threw their thin shadows down the rugged slope, / And nought but gnarlèd roots of ancient pines, / Branchless and blasted, clenched with grasping roots / The unwilling soil."
Example
More examples"Grey rocks did peep from the square moss, and stemmed / The struggling brook: tall spires of windlestrae / Threw their thin shadows down the rugged slope, / And nought but gnarlèd roots of ancient pines, / Branchless and blasted, clenched with grasping roots / The unwilling soil."
Etymology
From windle + straw.
More for "windlestraw"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.