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Mop vs Broom - What's the difference?

mop | broom |

As nouns the difference between mop and broom

is that mop is an implement for washing floors, or the like, made of a piece of cloth, or a collection of thrums, or coarse yarn, fastened to a handle while broom is a domestic utensil with fibers bound together at the end of a long handle, used for sweeping.

As verbs the difference between mop and broom

is that mop is to rub, scrub, clean or wipe with a mop, or as if with a mop while broom is to sweep.

As a proper noun Broom is

{{surname|lang=en}.

mop

English

Noun

(en noun) (wikipedia mop)
  • An implement for washing floors, or the like, made of a piece of cloth, or a collection of thrums, or coarse yarn, fastened to a handle.
  • (humorous) A dense head of hair.
    • He ran a comb through his mop and hurried out the door.
  • (British, dialect) A fair where servants are hired.
  • (British, dialect) The young of any animal; also, a young girl; a moppet.
    • (Halliwell)
  • A made-up face; a grimace.
  • * (rfdate) (Francis Beaumont) and
    • What mops and mowes it makes! --
  • * 1610 , , act 4 scene 1
    • Before you can say 'Come' and 'Go,'
    And breathe twice; and cry 'so, so,'
    Each one, tripping on his toe,
    Will be here with mop and mow.

    Derived terms

    * mophead * mop squeezer * mop water

    Descendants

    * German: (l)

    Verb

    (mopp)
  • To rub, scrub, clean or wipe with a mop, or as if with a mop.
    • to mop (or scrub) a floor
    to mop one's face with a handkerchief
  • To make a wry expression with the mouth.
    • (Shakespeare)

    Anagrams

    * * * ----

    broom

    English

    (wikipedia broom)

    Etymology 1

    (etyl), from (etyl) ‘edge’. Related to (l), (l).

    Noun

  • (label) A domestic utensil with fibers bound together at the end of a long handle, used for sweeping.
  • (countable, curling) An implement with which players sweep the ice to make a stone travel further and curl less; a sweeper.
  • Any of several yellow-flowered shrubs of the family Fabaceae, in the genera , with long, thin branches and small or few leaves.
  • * 1610 , , by (William Shakespeare), act 4 scene 1:
    • and thy broom groves,
    Whose shadow the dismissed bachelor loves,
    Being lass-lorn
    Derived terms
    * a new broom sweeps clean * broom wagon * broomstick * brooming * pushbroom / push broom / push-broom * whiskbroom

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • (intransitive) To sweep.
  • * 1855 September 29, , "Model Officials", in Household Words: A Weekly Journal , Bradbury and Evens (1856), page 206:
    • “[…] Sidi, I was busy in the exercise of my functions, occupied in brooming the front of the stables, when who should come but Hhamed Ould Denéï on horseback, at full gallop, as if he were going to break his neck. […]”
  • * , Our Street'', in ''Christmas Books: Mrs. Perkins's Ball, Our Street, Dr. Birch'', Chapman & Hall (1857), ''Our Street page 8:
    • It was but this morning at eight, when poor Molly, was brooming the steps, and the baker paying her by no means unmerited compliments, that my landlady came whirling out of the ground-floor front, and sent the poor girl whimpering into the kitchen.
  • * Opal Stanley Whiteley, The Story of Opal: The Journal of an Understanding Heart , Atlantic Monthly Press (1920), pages 58–59:
    • After that I did take the broom from its place, and I gave the floor a good brooming'. I ' broomed the boards up and down and cross-ways. There was not a speck of dirt on them left.
  • * 1997 , Will Hobbs, Far North (HarperCollins, ISBN 0380725363), page 100:
    • We broomed the dirt floor clean with spruce branches, brought our gear inside, and moved in.
    Quotations
    *

    Etymology 2

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • (nautical) (gloss, to clean a ship's bottom)

    • References

    *

    Anagrams

    * ----