Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun An annual weed (Sinapis arvensis) in the mustard family, native to Eurasia and naturalized in North America, having racemes of yellow flowers and hairy stems and foliage.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A common name of the wild mustard, Brassica Sinapistrum, a common pest in grain-fields. Also written
carlick .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Bot.) A cruciferous plant (
Brassica sinapistrum ) with yellow flowers; wild mustard. It is troublesome in grain fields. Called alsochardock ,chardlock ,chedlock , andkedlock . - noun a troublesome weed (
Raphanus Raphanistrum ) with straw-colored, whitish, or purplish flowers, and jointed pods: wild radish.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Any of several yellow-flowered
cruciferous weeds of grain fields, especially wild mustard.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun weedy Eurasian plant often a pest in grain fields
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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Such dry waste places send up plants to flower, such as charlock and poppy, quicker than happens in better soil, but they do not reach nearly the height or size.
The Toilers of the Field Richard Jefferies 1867
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UC Riverside scientists studying the genetic makeup of wild radishes in California have determined that the California wild radish is descended from hybrids between two species: cultivated radish and the weed, jointed charlock.
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He decided to pick it as a centerpiece for his bouquet of marguerites, charlock and cornflowers.
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I'd found a late patch of charlock near the stream, leaves wilting and brown around the edges, and had brought back a handful in my pocket, along with a few juniper berries picked during a stop earlier in the day.
Dragonfly in Amber Gabaldon, Diana 1992
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The oily burst of flavor sent fumes up the back of my throat that made my eyes water, but they did cleanse my tongue of the taste of grease and scorch, and would, with the charlock leaves, maybe be sufficient to ward off scurvy.
Dragonfly in Amber Gabaldon, Diana 1992
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He also mentions, as a more or less remarkable fact, "that a house, which was known to have existed for two hundred years, was pulled down, and, no sooner was the surface soil exposed to the influence of light and moisture, than it became covered with a crop of wild-mustard or charlock."
Life: Its True Genesis R. W. Wright
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So, too, while in our meadows we purposely propagate tender fodder plants, like grasses and clovers, we find on the margins of our pastures and by our roadsides only protected species; such as thistles, houndstongue, cuckoo-pint, charlock, nettles
Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 Charles Herbert Sylvester
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And he instances these facts to show that the seeds of this charlock, and these dyke plants, had lain dormant in the soil from the time the dykes were built, and the house erected.
Life: Its True Genesis R. W. Wright
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And the year in which they brought it no more, two Sulphurs, with dresses like sunlight on a charlock-field, came with the rest to the moon-daisies 'Feast; because not once in all their years of marriage had the perfect rose been lacking.
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And the year in which they brought it no more, two Sulphurs, with dresses like sunlight on a charlock-field, came with the rest to the moon-daisies 'Feast; because not once in all their years of marriage had the perfect rose been lacking.
yarb commented on the word charlock
Heathland, new-made watermeadow. Charlock, marsh-marigold. Crepitant oak forest where the boar furrowed black mould, his snout inflamed with worms and leaves.
- Geoffrey Hill, Mercian Hymns, XI
August 30, 2008
chained_bear commented on the word charlock
"I'd found a late patch of charlock near the stream, leaves wilting and brown around the edges, and brought back a handful in my pocket, along with a few juniper berries picked during a stop earlier in the day."
—Diana Gabaldon, Dragonfly in Amber (NY: Delacorte Press, 1991), 812–813
January 3, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word charlock
"The white charlock, which was obviously as much of a pest in Furtwangen as its yellow brother in Low Hall, touched the morbid scene with falsely cheerful light.'
The Chemistry of Tears by Peter Carey, p 94 of the Knopf hardcover edition
June 5, 2012
bilby commented on the word charlock
Mmmm, yummy edible weeds.
July 18, 2014