besomとは

意味・読み方・使い方

発音

• IPA^(key): /ˈbiː.zəm/

名詞

besom (複数形 besoms)

1. A broom made from a bundle of twigs tied onto a shaft.
   • 1975, Saul Bellow, Humboldt's Gift [Avon ed., 1976, p. 56]:

     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.

2. (Scotland, Northern England, derogatory) A troublesome woman.
   • 1903, Samuel Rutherford Crockett, The Dark O' the Moon: A Novel, page 130:

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

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

     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.

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

     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."

   • 2013, Nora Kay, Best Friends:

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

3. Any cleansing or purifying agent.
   • 1851, “A Few Words about War and the Peace Congress.”, in Littell’s Living Age, volume 28, page 364:

     "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."

派生語

• besom pocket