bamboo
/bæmˈbu/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 3.65 in modern English
12
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
2
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Any of the fast-growing grasses of the Bambusoideae subfamily, characterized by its woody, hollow, round, straight, jointed stem.
Countable; Uncountable
noun
A stick, rod, pole, or cane of bamboo, especially one used as a vessel for liquids, or as a tool for corporal punishment.
Countable
Example Sentences
- "However, the late Hsia and the Shang were considerably warmer, possibly comparable to Hang-chou today, an area where bamboo proliferates."
- "It was evident that Europeans seldom came here, for numbers of women skeltered away as I walked through the village and one girl about ten or twelve years old, who had just brought a bamboo full of water from the river, threw it down with a cry of horror and alarm the moment she caught sight of me, turned around and jumped into the stream."
- "[…] the beadle is punished by fine, and sometimes bambooed, if robberies are too frequent within his jurisdiction, or if he fails to secure the person of any malefactor particularly wanted by his superior officers."
- "The craze for bambooing furniture and accessories was one of many popular paint techniques in the 18th century and early Victorian era."
- "If you're just a girl from Lucknow, with no fluid cash, you'll be just one more among thousands going from producer to producer by auto-rickshaw, and every photographer who agrees to take a picture for your portfolio will want to introduce you to his bed upstairs in the loft. And what you'll get out of all this in the end is a lot of bambooing and maybe a dance or two in his videos."
- "One scene of attachment and intimacy shows Vijay careening into their shared apartment dead drunk and insulting a praying Ajay for his devotion to the household god, Hanuman […], saying that instead of being rescued Ajay will be "bamboo-ed," a popular slang for anal penetration."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Dravidian *wē Proto-Dravidian *mpu Proto-Dravidian *wēmpu Tamil வேம்பு (vēmpu)bor. ▲ Proto-Dravidian *wēmpu Kannada ಬಂಬು (bambu)bor. Malay bambubor. Portuguese bambubor. Dutch bamboebor. English bamboo Borrowed from Dutch bamboe, from Portuguese bambu, from Malay bambu, from Kannada ಬಂಬು (bambu), variant form of ಬೇವು (bēvu). Cognate with Malayalam വേപ്പ് (vēppŭ), Telugu వేప (vēpa), from Proto-Dravidian *wēmpu (“neem”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
Usage
Inflected Forms
Derived Forms
Phrases
African alpine bamboo
African bamboo
Andean bamboo
arrow bamboo
bamboo antshrike
bamboo baksheesh
bamboo borer
bamboo ceiling