straw

noun

1. (countable)A dried stalk of a cereal plant.
2. (uncountable)Such dried stalks considered collectively; this bulk matter may be a chief salable product, a by-product, fodder, bedding, or green manure, depending on region and on current market conditions.
3. (countable)A drinking straw.
4. (countable, uncommon, uncountable)A pale, yellowish beige colour, like that of a dried straw.
5. (countable, figuratively, uncountable)Anything proverbially worthless; the least possible thing.

   “to not care a straw”

   “‘For thy sword and thy bow I care not a straw, Nor all thine arrows to boot; If I get a knop upon thy bare scop, Thou canst as well shite as shoote.’”

   “He also decided, which was more to his purpose, that Eleanor did not care a straw for him, and that very probably she did care a straw for his rival.”

   “To be deeply interested in the accidents of our existence, to enjoy keenly the mixed texture of human experience, rather leads a man to disregard precautions, and risk his neck against a straw.”

6. (countable, uncountable)A straw owner.

   “The Bromfield Street offices were housed in a dilapidated but heavily-insured building, owned by a straw for a wealthy downtown real estate developer, surrounded by expensive new commercial developments, and in a city renowned for arson-for-profit.”

adj

1. (not-comparable)Made of straw.

   “straw hat”

2. (not-comparable)Of a pale, yellowish beige colour, like that of a dried straw.
3. (figuratively, not-comparable)Imaginary, but presented as real.

   “A straw enemy built up in the media to seem like a real threat, which then collapses like a balloon.”

verb

1. (idiomatic, transitive)To scatter or to spread loosely.
2. (transitive)To lay straw around plants to protect them from frost.
3. (obsolete, slang)To sell straws on the streets in order to cover the giving to the purchaser of things usually banned, such as pornography.

   “It was the custom for the disaffected of those days to make known their grievances by distributing papers on doors of public buildings, and even strawing them in the high way, for the benefit of the chance passenger.”

   “I have already alluded to "strawing," which can hardly be described as quackery. It is rather a piece of mountebankery. […] The strawer offers to sell any passer by in the streets a straw and give the purchaser a paper which he dares not sell. Accordingly as he judges of the character of his audience, so he intimates that the paper is political, libellous, irreligious, or indecent.”

   “Townspeople who saw 'strawing' and 'following the wran' as invasions by 'lusty young men of the country' saw Volunteer events in the same way.”

name

1. A surname transferred from the nickname.