Other forms: weeds, weeding, weeded
A weed is any plant growing where the gardener did not want it. Nothing about the plant itself makes it one.
That is the whole definition, and it is entirely a matter of place: a poppy in a wheatfield is a weed, and the same poppy in a border is a flower. The verb means to pull them out, and weeding is a Saturday morning of most summers. From there comes weed out, meaning to remove the unwanted from a group. British slang also uses weed for a feeble person, and it is a common informal word for cannabis.
1nounweedA plant growing where it is not wanted.
“The path was thick with weeds.”
2verbremoveTo remove unwanted plants, or unwanted members of a group.
“She spent the morning weeding the border.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
Old English
wēod
Middle English
weed
English, today
weed
From Middle English weed, from Old English wēod. From Middle English weed, weod, from Old English wēod (“weed”), from Proto-West Germanic weud (“weed”). Cognate with stq Jood (“weed”), West Frisian wjûd (“weed”), Dutch wied (“unwanted plant, weed”), German Low German Weed (“weed”), Old High German wiota (“fern”). See also woad.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA