besom

plural besoms · alternative obsolete beesom

1. A broom made from a bundle of twigs tied onto a shaft.

   At Ickwell Green, in Bedfordshire, there is a permanent maypole. There, the May Queen is accompanied by moggies (raggedly dressed women) carrying besoms - birch-twig brooms.

   1980, AA Book of British Villages, Drive Publications Ltd, page 263

   1 more example

   As a kid I went to the Russian Bath with my own father. … Down in the cellar men moaned on the steam-softened planks while they were massaged abrasively with oak-leaf besoms lathered in pickle buckets.

   1976 September, Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift, New York, N.Y.: Avon Books, →ISBN, page 56

2. Northern EnglandScotlandderogatoryA troublesome woman.

   "Eh, but she was a besom, if a' tales be true !"

   1903, Samuel Rutherford Crockett, The Dark O' the Moon: A Novel, page 130

   3 more examples

   Janet's eyes began to look dim, and I had to frown at her very hard; then I had to turn my frown on Jean ... and Janet, the besom, took advantage of my divided attention.

   1917, A.S. Neill., A Dominie Dismissed, page 10

   Uncle Angus went on about the behavior of the car. "She's a besom, a proper besom, her and her gears. She'll be the death of me yet one of these days."

   1963, Margaret McLean MacPherson, The Shinty Boys, page 187

   "She's a besom but no' bad at times, like now," Agnes said as she bit into a dough-ring.

   2013, Nora Kay, Best Friends

3. Any cleansing or purifying agent.

   "The march of an army through a conquered country supposing it to be a highly civilized one, is a besom of destruction, whose havoc, moral and material, it would take at least a century to recover."

   1851, “A Few Words about War and the Peace Congress.”, in Littell’s Living Age, volume 28, page 364

present singular third person besoms · participle present besoming · participle past besomed · past besomed · alternative obsolete beesom

1. archaicpoeticTo sweep.

   1 more example

   Now, in her iceberg-white, holily laundered crinoline nightgown, under virtuous polar sheets, in her spruced and scoured dust-defying bedroom in trig and trim Bay View, a house for paying guests at the top of the town, Mrs Ogmore-Prichard widow, twice, of Mr Ogmore, linolium, retired, and Mr Prichard, failed bookmaker, who maddened by besoming, swabbing and scrubbing, the voice of the vacuum-cleaner and the fume of polish, ironically swallowed disinfectant...

   1954, Dylan Thomas, Under Milk Wood […] , New York: New Directions, page 13