chickweed
(ˈtʃɪkwiːd)
Sometimes chicken-weed. Also 5 chekenwede, 5–6 chekynwede, 6 chykenwede; 6 check-, chykwede, chikewed, -weede.
[f. chicken n. + weed, as eaten by chickens. The full form chicken-weed, which is the earlier, is still used in Scotland.]
1. A name now usually applied to a small weedy plant, Stellaria media (family Caryophyllaceæ), but formerly to many other plants more or less allied, as Stellaria aquatica, and species of Arenaria; and even to others having only a similar habit of growth, as the annual weedy species of Veronica.
| α c 1440 Promp. Parv. 74 Ch[ek]yn wede, herbe, hospia. 1538 Turner Libellus, Chykenwede, A[l]sine. 1831 Carlyle Sart. Res. ii. iv, Like a hungry lion invited to a feast of chickenweed. |
| β 1503 Sheph. Kalender (1656) xxviii, Take chick weed, clythers, ale, and oat meal, and make pottage there with. 1538 Turner Libellus, Chykwede, a[l]sine, anagallis. 1570 Levins Manip. 52 Chickweede, anagallis. 1578 Lyte Dodoens 50 Chickeweede hath sundry upright, rounde, and knobby stalkes. 1597 Gerard Herbal ii. cxcii. 615 The Chickweeds are green in Winter. 1664 Evelyn Kal. Hort. (1729) 208 Give them [Birds]..Beets, Groundsel, Chickweed. 1853 G. Johnston Nat. Hist. E. Bord. 43 Turnips among which chickweed grew luxuriously. 1873 Geikie Gt. Ice Age v. 60 The purple lichnis and white-starred chick-weed. |
2. With various defining adjuncts: as bastard c. (Sibthorpia europæa); † germander c. (Veronica agrestis); † ivy c. (V. hederifolia); sea c. (Honkenya peploides); water c. (Montia fontana, also sometimes Stellaria aquatica, and Callitriche verna). See also mouse-ear C., etc.
| 1597 Gerard Herbal ii. cxciii. 615 Germander Chickweed hath small tender branches. Ibid. i. clxxxi. 487 The great Chickweede riseth vp with stalkes a cubite high, and some time higher. 1776 Withering Bot. Arrangem. (1796) II. 175 Montia fontana, Small Water Chickweed, or Blinks. |
3. chicken-weed: ‘a name under which Roccella tinctoria has been sometimes imported’ (Treas. Bot. 1866).