mushroom

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A small fungus with a stem and a round top, some kinds of which can be eaten.

   Some mushrooms are good to eat, while others are poisonous.

2. 2
   verb

   To grow or increase very quickly.

   The town's population mushroomed from 10,000 to 110,000 in five years.

3. 3
   verb

   To go out and collect mushrooms.

   We used to go mushrooming in the forest every autumn.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Mushroom entered late Middle English from a variable French form brought by the Normans, recorded in spellings such as musserun and mosheron. Its modern form resulted from folk etymology, which reshaped the unfamiliar word as though it contained mush and room, although those elements do not explain its meaning. Spellings ending in the original n remained common into the 19th century.

From Middle English muscheron, musseron, from Anglo-Norman musherum, moscheron, from Old French moisseron, of obscure origin: probably derived from Old French mosse, moise ("moss"; whence also French mousse), as the use first applied to a type of fungus which grows in moss, from Frankish *mosu (“moss”) or Old Dutch *mosa (“moss”), akin to Old High German mosa (“moor, swamp”), Old High German mos (“moss, bog”), Old High German mios (“moss, mire”), Old English mēos (“moss”), Old English mōs (“bog, marsh”), Old Norse mosi (“moss”), Old Norse myrr (“bog, mire”), from Proto-Germanic *musą, *musô, *…

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