foxtail

Estimated CEFR level: C2 — Proficiency

Estimated from word frequency; not an official CEFR classification.

Definition

noun grasses of the genera Alopecurus and Setaria having dense silky or bristly brushlike flowering spikes

From Middle English fox-tail. By surface analysis, fox + tail.

He had “recipes” for exterminating from a field, blight, tares, foxtail, and all parasitic growths which destroy the wheat. — Les Misérables, Victor Hugo
The bullet pierced his manly breast--yet, valiant to the last, Young Fixings drew his bowie-knife, and up his foxtail * cast. — The Book of Ballads: Eleventh Edition, 1870, Theodore, Sir Martin
And you see yourself how the world is vilely abused, as when with a foxtail one claps another’s breech to cajole him. — Gargantua and Pantagruel, François Rabelais

foxtail grass

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