white-man's foot
- noun
- /ˈhwaɪtˌmænz fʊt/
- UK
:
planta de pie de hombre blanco
- I found a patch of white-man's foot in the garden.
Examples
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Gardeners often try to remove white-man's foot because it spreads so quickly.
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The field was covered in white-man's foot, making it difficult for crops to grow.
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Native species sometimes struggle to compete with white-man's foot in disturbed soils.
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The white-man's foot is often mistaken for other weeds.
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Gardeners often try to remove white-man's foot because it spreads so quickly.
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The field was covered in white-man's foot, making it difficult for crops to grow.
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Native species sometimes struggle to compete with white-man's foot in disturbed soils.
Synonyms
A common weed with broad, round leaves that grows in lawns and roadsides
A common plant with broad leaves that grows in lawns and gardens
A low plant with broad leaves that grows as a weed in lawns and fields
A common weed with wide leaves that grows in lawns and gardens
Surface Forms
Morphology
white-man's + foot
The headword denotes a specific plant species (a common plantain) whose meaning is lexicalized and not a straightforward composition of 'white', 'man' and 'foot'. The modifier 'white-man's' is not a productive, transparent descriptor for a plant and 'foot' does not clearly signal 'plant' or 'weed', so a B1 learner who knows the parts would not reliably infer the intended botanical meaning.
Etymology
White-man's foot may come from the way this plant followed people from Europe. One popular story says its seeds stuck to shoes or grew where people walked, so the plant seemed to travel with the 'white man' and that is why the name means a common weed that spreads quickly.
