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Glite Dictionary
quack grass

quack grass

8.8
A common weed with long stems under the ground that spreads quickly through lawns
  • noun
  • /kwæk ɡræs/
  • UK
translation icon : hierba de los patos
  • Gardeners often complain that quack grass spreads quickly and is hard to eliminate.

Examples

  • The quack grass in my flower bed grew so vigorously that it suffocated the flowers.

  • Quack grass does not suit my purpose: growing tomatoes, peas, and beans.

    Academic text (1992)

  • I feel very mean-spirited toward quack grass, which invades our vegetable garden and flowers.

    Academic text (1992)

  • I hate quack grass (aka couch grass, witch grass, quick grass, twitch grass, dog grass, Dutch grass, and quelch).

    Academic text (1992)

  • For me, PC finally hit home the other day when a normally placid ecologist upbraided me for calling quack grass (Agropyron repens) a weed.

    Academic text (1992)

  • Even Pamela Jones, author of the recent Just Weeds: History, Myth and Uses (Prentice Hall, 1991), admits she knows of no normal use for quack grass in the human diet except as a coffee substitute or a bread flour in times of famine.

    Academic text (1992)

  • If you don't control it, quack grass can invade and dominate your vegetable garden.

Synonyms

couch grass
vsquack grass
  • UK
1 7.5

A European grass with long underground roots that spreads quickly and becomes a common weed

serves as the general name used across contexts instead of regional terms
quackgrass
vsquack grass
  • UK
9.9

A wild grass that spreads by underground stems and is hard to remove

is the same but written as two words
quick grass
vsquack grass
  • Specialized
7.5

A fast-spreading grass with creeping roots that grows as a weed

uses the established common form rather than the variant
Agropyron repens
vsquack grass
  • UK
9.9

A fast-spreading European grass with long underground stems that is a common weed in gardens and fields

uses the common English form rather than the Latin name
dog grass
vsquack grass
  • US
8.4

A grass from Europe that spreads quickly by stems under the ground and is a weed in North America

is the widely accepted name rather than an informal variant
means grass
vsquack grass
  • Specialized
8.9

A tall grass that spreads by creeping roots and feeds animals but can be a farm pest

focuses on being a naturalized weed that spreads by creeping rhizomes

How Invasive

invasive
  • Specialized
1 4.8
kudzu
  • US
8 8.8
quack grass
  • UK
8.8
turfgrass
  • Specialized
1 4.9

Surface Forms

quack grass singular
quack grasses plural

Morphology

quack + grass

The compound is a proper common name for a particular species and the modifier 'quack' is ambiguous/uncommon in this sense (not the duck sound or 'charlatan'), so knowing 'quack' and 'grass' literally would not allow a B1 learner to infer this refers to Elymus repens. Plant names are often lexically arbitrary or historical rather than compositional, so the meaning is not derivable from the constituents.

Etymology

Quack grass may get its name from quack, a word for a 'fake doctor'. People thought the grass was like a bad cure because it looks harmless but spreads fast and damages crops, so the name was used for this unwanted weed.