A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1068 entries
besom
A broom made of a bundle of twigs bound around a handle — birch, heather, or broom itself — with the twigs left long and springy rather than cut flat. It sweeps by flicking rather than dragging, which suits rough ground, leaf litter, and stone floors. Still made and still used: A besom is what most people picture when they picture a witch’s broom.
Etymology
Old English besma, a bundle of twigs, a rod, a broom, from a Germanic root that also gives German Besen and Dutch bezem. The point worth noticing is which word is older. Besom is the original English name for the tool; broom is the name of the shrub (Old English brōm) that the tool was often made out of, and it took the tool’s name over so completely that hardly anyone now connects a household broom with the yellow-flowered plant on the hillside.
Notes
In Scots and northern English a besom is also a term for a person, applied to a woman with more spirit than the speaker approves of. Handing over a besom was part of some marriage customs, which is where jumping the besom comes from.