starve-acre
English edit
Alternative forms edit
Noun edit
- A type of crowfoot Ranunculus arvensis, known for growing on impoverished soil.
- 1855, Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, page 207:
- Some sandy soils are much overrun with the wild radish (Raphanus raphanistrum), provincially called " rump," while the clays are swarmed with starve-acre (Ranunculus arvensis), and the clivers or burrs (Galium aparine), which are very troublesome to separate from the grain when winnowed.
- 1922, Industrial & Mining Standard, page 500:
- It seems that a particularly tiresome form of rauunculus, well described by the nickname of “starve-acre," can be cxterminated with dressings of sulphate of ammonia, and that this method is equally efficacious in ridding land of the picturesque but unprofitable poppy. Where there is more starve-acre than grass, the farmer pays twice his nominal rent, and is otherwise wasting money by growing weeds on his pasture.
- 1925, The Farmer and stockbreeder year book and country gentleman's almanack:
- It is quite common for farmers to use cereal grains for seed which contain weed seeds, e.g. starve-acre (ranunculus arvensis), docks, wild oats, rye-like brome (bromus secolinus), etc.
Adjective edit
starve-acre (comparative more starve-acre, superlative most starve-acre)
- Pertaining to or characteristic of unproductive, impoverished soil.
- 1891, Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'urbervilles:
- There was no exaggeration in Marian's definition of Flintcomb-Ash farm as a starve-acre place.
- 2004, James Everett Kibler, Walking Toward Home, →ISBN, page 35:
- They'd grown up together, had seen a lot of life, and were mostly inseparable, through six decades of raven, starve-acre days.
- 2011, John Rember, Mfa in a Box:
- I suggest that he was instead thinking about his birthplace, where, for a while, those infants did live to inherit the earth, at least the mined-out, falling-down, starve-acre part of it that was the town of Hailey.