Synonyms for broom
EXAMPLES FROM THE WEB FOR BROOM
He has all his housework there, a broom and a duster, and I dare say he has a cooking-stove and a gridiron.
He signed to me to take a broom—to march into the garden—to set to work.
When accidentally struck by the janitor's broom, he gives off a cloud of dust.
He carried the dustpan and broom away to their places, but he did not reenter the room.
He was sweeping thoroughly into every corner where a broom could find entrance.
His employer, seeing the skillful strokes of the broom, wondered.
All day long his wife was screaming at them and chasing them with her broom.
A broom lying directly in the middle of the floor where it had been dropped.
There were clumps of broom, thick with golden flower, about the base of the hill.
If I'd broken my broom over her back I wouldn't a cared so much.
WORD ORIGIN
Old English brom "broom, brushwood," the common flowering shrub whose twigs were tied together to make a tool for sweeping, from Proto-Germanic *bræmaz "thorny bush" (cf. Dutch braam, German Brombeere "blackberry"), from PIE root *bh(e)rem- "to project, a point."
Traditionally, both the flowers and sweeping with broom twigs were considered unlucky in May (Suffolk, Sussex, Wiltshire, etc.). The witch's flying broomstick originally was one among many such objects (pitchfork, trough, bowl), but the broomstick became fixed as the popular tool of supernatural flight via engravings from a famous Lancashire witch trial of 1612.