bur·dock

(bûr′dŏk′)

Any of several plants of the genus Arctium of the composite family, having edible roots and pink or purplish flower heads surrounded by prickly bracts that form burs.

[bur + dock.]

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

burdock

(ˈbɜːˌdɒk)

(Plants) a coarse weedy Eurasian plant of the genus Arctium, having large heart-shaped leaves, tiny purple flowers surrounded by hooked bristles, and burlike fruits: family Asteraceae (composites). Also called: hardoke

[C16: from bur + dock⁴]

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

bur•dock

(ˈbɜr dɒk)

n.

a composite plant of the genus Arctium, esp. A. lappa, a coarse broad-leaved weed bearing prickly heads of burs that stick to clothing.

[1590–1600; bur + dock⁴]

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Noun

burdock - any of several erect biennial herbs of temperate Eurasia having stout taproots and producing burs

clotbur

Arctium, genus Arctium - burdock

Arctium minus, common burdock, lesser burdock - a plant that is ubiquitous in all but very acid soil; found in most of Europe and North Africa

Arctium lappa, great burdock, greater burdock, cocklebur - burdock having heart-shaped leaves found in open woodland, hedgerows and rough grassland of Europe (except extreme N) and Asia Minor; sometimes cultivated for medicinal and culinary use

subshrub, suffrutex - low-growing woody shrub or perennial with woody base

Translations

lapo

takiainen

bojtorján

brusture

burdock

[ˈbɜːdɒk] N (Bot) → bardana f

Collins Spanish Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged 8th Edition 2005 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1971, 1988 © HarperCollins Publishers 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005

burdock

n → Klette f

Collins German Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 7th Edition 2005. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1980 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007

burdock

n (bot) bardana, lampazo (esp. Esp)

Mentioned in

References in classic literature

The burdock never grows alone, but where there grows one there always grow several: it is a great delight, and all this delightfulness is snails' food.

We are provided with a house from our birth, and the burdock forest is planted for our sakes!

Do you not think that there are some of our species at a great distance in the interior of the burdock forest?"

Now, there was an old manor-house, where they no longer ate snails, they were quite extinct; but the burdocks were not extinct, they grew and grew all over the walks and all the beds; they could not get the mastery over them--it was a whole forest of burdocks.

"Or the burdocks have grown up over it, so that they cannot come out.

View in context

Before this ugly edifice, and between it and the wheel-track of the street, was a grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock, pig-weed, apple-pern, and such unsightly vegetation, which evidently found something congenial in the soil that had so early borne the black flower of civilised society, a prison.

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Here in soap boxes hidden among the trees were stored all their treasures: wee baskets and plates and cups made of burdock balls, bits of broken china for parties, dolls, soon to be outgrown, but serving well as characters in all sorts of romances enacted there,--deaths, funerals, weddings, christenings.

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Running down the long hall, she peeped out at both doors, but saw nothing feathered except a draggle-tailed chicken under a burdock leaf.

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In Allan Water, near by where it falls into the Forth, we found a little sandy islet, overgrown with burdock, butterbur and the like low plants, that would just cover us if we lay flat.

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Little details gave each field a particular physiognomy, dear to the eyes that have looked on them from childhood: the pool in the corner where the grasses were dank and trees leaned whisperingly; the great oak shadowing a bare place in mid-pasture; the high bank where the ash-trees grew; the sudden slope of the old marl-pit making a red background for the burdock; the huddled roofs and ricks of the homestead without a traceable way of approach; the gray gate and fences against the depths of the bordering wood; and the stray hovel, its old, old thatch full of mossy hills and valleys with wondrous modulations of light and shadow such as we travel far to see in later life, and see larger, but not more beautiful.

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Stubbornly, as though insisting on its rights, the wind stopped Levin, and tearing the leaves and flowers off the lime trees and stripping the white birch branches into strange unseemly nakedness, it twisted everything on one side--acacias, flowers, burdocks, long grass, and tall tree-tops.

View in context

On either side extended a ruinous wooden fence of open lattice-work, through which could be seen a grassy yard, and, especially in the angles of the building, an enormous fertility of burdocks, with leaves, it is hardly an exaggeration to say, two or three feet long.

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