MUSHROOM • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Mushroom

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/mˈəʃrum/ Listen

noun

Mushroom n.

(Bot.)

(a)

An edible fungus (Agaricus campestris), having a white stalk which bears a convex or oven flattish expanded portion called the pileus. This is whitish and silky or somewhat scaly above, and bears on the under side radiating gills which are at first flesh-colored, but gradually become brown. The plant grows in rich pastures and is proverbial for rapidity of growth and shortness of duration. It has a pleasant smell, and is largely used as food. It is also cultivated from spawn.

(b)

Any large fungus developing a visible fruiting body with a stem and cap, usu. of the basidiomycetes; especially One of the genus Agaricus; a toadstool. Several species are edible; but many are very poisonous. The term mushroom is used most often for edible varieties, the poisonous ones being termed toadstools or other names. But this distinction is often ignored.

One who rises suddenly from a low condition in life; an upstart.

verb

mushroom v. i.

To grow or expand rapidly.

To grow so much and so rapidly as to change qualitatively; used with into; as, a minor border skirmish mushroomed into a full-blown war.

adjective

Mushroom adj.

Of or pertaining to mushrooms; as, mushroom catchup.

Resembling mushrooms in rapidity of growth and shortness of duration; short-lived; ephemerial; as, mushroom cities.

Mushroom anchor, an anchor shaped like a mushroom, capable of grasping the ground in whatever way it falls.

Mushroom coral (Zool.), any coral of the genus Fungia. See Fungia.

Mushroom spawn (Bot.), the mycelium, or primary filamentous growth, of the mushroom; also, cakes of earth and manure containing this growth, which are used for propagation of the mushroom.

mushroom cloud, a cloud of smoke rising and then spreading laterally to take on the shape of a mushroom caused by large fires or explosions, esp. nuclear explosions.

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Etymology of 'Mushroom'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Mushroom" Quotes from Famous Books

... is the heritage of an honest and long established industry. It is seventy-five per cent of its capital. It is entirely beyond the reach of the mushroom agency, which in consequence has to accept less desirable retainers involving no such requirements, or go to the wall. The collection of photographs is almost priceless and the clippings, letters, and memoranda in the ...

— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train

... to keep their money in their pockets, and to read the papers read in that room, must have seen that there was a constant steady advance in scientific knowledge of the laws of electricity and in their practical applications, and as soon as some of these rotten, mushroom companies had been wiped out of existence, they might hope that real practical progress would be made, and that the day was not far distant when the public would again acquire confidence in electrical enterprise. ...

— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various

... a special disease of the hair and beard, due to the presence in the epidermis of a kind of mushroom. Well, it is probable ...

— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... giving me just time to hold well ahead of him and fire. At the report he went down in a heap, the "umbrella-pointed" bullet going in at one shoulder, and ranging forward, breaking the neck. The leaden portion of the bullet, in the proper mushroom or umbrella shape, stopped under the neck skin on the farther side. It is a ...

— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt

... bullet was removed from the cloth it was said to have looked like a mushroom, the end that had first touched the cloth ...

— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 47, September 30, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

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