cocklebur
1
9.6
- noun
- /ˈkɑkəlˌbɜr/
- US
:
burr
- After playing outside, I noticed several cockleburs caught in my dog's fur.
Examples
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When hiking in the field, I had to carefully remove a few cockleburs that had stuck to my socks.
-
Yeah, we were a couple of cockleburs, huh?
-
A few cockleburs had wound themselves in his hair.
Fiction book (1993) -
When you get the cockleburs out of your hair perhaps, and the barn yard out of your manners.
-
After pulling a cocklebur out of my hair, I pillowed my head down on the row to peep up from the stalks, where I could see their disembodied hands, which leaped over the stalks with a life of their own.
Fiction book (1993) -
The farmer explained that cockleburs often grow alongside crops and can be a nuisance to harvest.
Synonyms
A coarse weed with spiny seed heads that stick to fur or clothes
A prickly plant with small spiny balls that stick to clothes or animal fur
A coarse weed with spiny seeds that stick to animals or clothing
How Clinging
Surface Forms
Morphology
Etymology
Cocklebur comes from two old parts: cockle, once used for a small weed or seed, and bur, meaning 'a seed that sticks' and like the familiar word burr. So a cocklebur is a prickly seed pod that clings to fur and clothing.