billion-dollar grass
noun
Simple meaning
Coarse annual grass cultivated in Japan and southeastern Asia for its edible seeds and for forage.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
bilyuhndahlergrasSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈbɪljənˈdɑlɚɡɹæs
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
Any of the genus Echinochloa of barnyard grass, widely considered harmful weeds.
Coarse annual grass cultivated in Japan and southeastern Asia for its edible seeds and for forage; important wildlife food in United States
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Any of the genus Echinochloa of barnyard grass, widely considered harmful weeds.
Used this way, billion-dollar grass is a specialist word with a faintly unfavourable edge. This is a scientific use: it names something precisely within a field of study, so it appears in research and teaching more than in conversation.
- Emotional tone
- Slightly negative
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Critical or judgemental
- Usage feel
- Clinical and detached
Where it naturally appears
- Science
- Academic writing
- Technical/specialist writing
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.