yellow nutgrass
- noun
:
chufa
- Children once dug up yellow nutgrass tubers to eat as a snack.
Examples
-
Gardeners often struggle to control yellow nutgrass because of its persistent roots.
-
The yellow nutgrass is often found in wetlands.
-
The farmer discovered yellow nutgrass growing in the corner of his field.
-
Farmers sometimes struggle with yellow nutgrass in their fields.
-
As a child, I enjoyed gathering yellow nutgrass tubers from the garden to snack on.
-
Many gardeners use herbicides to prevent yellow nutgrass from taking over their flower beds.
-
The local market sells fresh yellow nutgrass tubers, which are popular for their unique flavor.
Synonyms
1
9.9
A plant like grass with small edible nutlike parts under the ground
A small edible root like a tiny nut that people eat or use in food
A small plant with edible parts like nuts that grow under the ground
A grass-like plant that makes small sweet edible tubers called tiger nuts
A grass-like plant with small round edible underground tubers that often grows as a weed
A grasslike plant with small edible parts under the ground that often grows as a weed
A grass-like plant with small edible nutlike roots often seen as a weed
How Edible
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly and transparently derived from 'yellow' (a color) modifying 'nutgrass' (a plant with edible nutlike tubers); a B1 learner who knows both constituents will understand it denotes a nutgrass that is yellow. Color + noun compounding is a regular, cross-linguistic compositional pattern, so no idiomatic or unpredictable shift is involved.
Etymology
Yellow nutgrass is named for how it looks: a grass-like plant with small, yellow, nutlike tubers that people once dug up and ate as a 'snack'. That's why the name joins yellow, nut, and grass, and today it refers to that particular plant.