- mush|room
- mush|room «MUHSH room, -rum», noun, adjective, verb.–n.1. a) a small fungus shaped like an umbrella, ball, or other thickened mass, that grows very fast. Some mushrooms are good to eat; some, such as toadstools, are poisonous. b) an edible basidiomycetous fungus.2. anything shaped or growing like a mushroom, such as the mushroom-shaped cloud of radioactive matter that rises from the explosion of a nuclear bomb: »
The silent trembling of seismographs and the distant mushroom in the sky (Punch).
3. Archaic. a bold and offensive newcomer; upstart: »Here is now a mushroom of opulence, who pays a cook seventy guineas a week for furnishing him with one meal a day (Tobias Smollett).
–adj.1. of or like a mushroom: »mushroom coral. The mushroom cloud of the A-bomb hung over the Nevada desert again (Newsweek).
2. made of or with mushrooms: »a mushroom sauce, mushroom soup.
–v.i.1. to grow very fast: »His business mushroomed when he opened the new store. The little town mushroomed into a city.
2. to become flattened at one end: »A bullet sometimes mushrooms when it hits a very hard object.
╂[alteration of Old French mousseron, or moisseron, perhaps < mousse moss]–mush´room|like´, adjective.
Useful english dictionary. 2012.
