RAGWEED

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does ragweed mean? 

• RAGWEED (noun)
  The noun RAGWEED has 2 senses:

1. widespread European weed having yellow daisylike flowers; sometimes an obnoxious weed and toxic to cattle if consumed in quantity

2. any of numerous chiefly North American weedy plants constituting the genus Ambrosia that produce highly allergenic pollen responsible for much hay fever and asthma

  Familiarity information: RAGWEED used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• RAGWEED (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Widespread European weed having yellow daisylike flowers; sometimes an obnoxious weed and toxic to cattle if consumed in quantity

Classified under:

Nouns denoting plants

Synonyms:

benweed; ragweed; ragwort; Senecio jacobaea; tansy ragwort

Hypernyms ("ragweed" is a kind of...):

weed (any plant that crowds out cultivated plants)

Holonyms ("ragweed" is a member of...):

genus Senecio; Senecio (enormous and diverse cosmopolitan genus of trees and shrubs and vines and herbs including many weeds)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Any of numerous chiefly North American weedy plants constituting the genus Ambrosia that produce highly allergenic pollen responsible for much hay fever and asthma

Classified under:

Nouns denoting plants

Synonyms:

ambrosia; bitterweed; ragweed

Hypernyms ("ragweed" is a kind of...):

weed (any plant that crowds out cultivated plants)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "ragweed"):

Ambrosia artemisiifolia; common ragweed (annual weed with finely divided foliage and spikes of green flowers; common in North America; introduced elsewhere accidentally)

Ambrosia trifida; great ragweed (a coarse annual with some leaves deeply and palmately three-cleft or five-cleft)

Ambrosia psilostachya; perennial ragweed; western ragweed (coarse perennial ragweed with creeping roots of dry barren lands of southwestern United States and Mexico)

Holonyms ("ragweed" is a member of...):

genus Ambrosia (comprising the ragweeds; in some classification considered the type genus of a separate family Ambrosiaceae)

 Context examples 

An arbitrary unit for the measurement of Amb a 1 (or Antigen E), a 38 kD glycoprotein that is the major allergen in short ragweed pollen allergen extracts.

(Amb a 1 Unit, NCI Thesaurus)