kelp

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   large brown seaweeds having fluted leathery fronds

   Kelp has many commercial applications.

2. 2
   noun

   Any of several large brown algae seaweeds (especially of order Laminariales).

   Underneath the area demarcated by the buoys, Ms Puckett plants kelp—a type of seaweed—on long ropes that resemble washing lines.

3. 3
   noun

   The calcined ashes of seaweed, formerly used in glass and iodine manufacture.

   Kelp was burned for its mineral ash.

4. 4
   verb

   To gather kelp.

   Just before we reached Seward the pilot got a radio message that a fishing boat in Thumb Cove had some kelp […] Neither of us had ever kelped before but there wasn't much to it, and we started bringing in full boxes back to Eads' barge.

Inherited from Middle English *kelpe, culpe, *kilpe (Early Modern English kilpe), of unclear origin, though the attested forms point to Old English *cylp, possibly from Proto-West Germanic *kulpi, from Proto-Germanic *kulpiz (“lump, boll”, referencing the airsacks of species such as bladderwrack and knotweed), potentially a substrate term connected to Latin globus (“globe”) and Proto-Germanic *klumpô (“clump”). If the above theory is accepted, cognate with Low German Kulp, Külp, Kulpe (“lump in the eye, ball, thick nose”), Norwegian Nynorsk kulp (“short tube”), and Swedish kulp (“stout pers...

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