Other forms: brooms
A broom is the long brush you sweep the floor with. Bristles on a wide head, and a handle you hold with both hands.
It differs from an ordinary brush by the handle, which lets you sweep standing up. Witches fly on them in every version of the story, which has given English broomstick as a separate word. A besom is the old bundle-of-twigs kind. There is a good proverb about change, since a new broom sweeps clean means somebody newly appointed makes a lot of changes at once.
1nounbroomA long-handled brush for sweeping floors.
“He fetched a broom and swept up the glass.”
Proto-Indo-European
*bʰrem-
Proto-West Germanic
*brām — bramble
Old English
brōm — brushwood
Middle English
brom
English, today
broom
Middle English brom, from Old English brōm (“brushwood”), from Proto-West Germanic brām (“bramble”) (compare stq Brom, West Frisian brem, Dutch braam, German Low German Braam), from Proto-Indo-European bʰrem-, from bʰer- ‘edge’. Related to brim, brink. Replaced besom (from Old English besma (“broom, rod”)), which is now restricted in meaning to a particular kind of broom. shotgun So called because it is (like the cleaning utensil) long and held similarly to a besom and “cleans” what is in front.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA