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Author: Emma Ferrett, CED Definer
Date: August 1, 2025 | Category: Guest Column

quackgrass, n
(also quack grass, quick grass, couch grass)

a grass native to Europe and Western Asia, invasive with serious agricultural impact in Canada: Elymus repens

I spend a lot of time thinking about plants. What’s going on inside a bean tendril? Why do we hate dandelions so much? And who decided we should call the snake plant mother-in-law’s tongue? These are the questions that keep me up at night. And as someone who studies plant names for my PhD dissertation, you might think that I would be the perfect person to define plants in a dictionary. But in fact, having obsessive expertise in a niche area can hinder the defining process, because it becomes difficult to determine when to stop. Figuring out when to stop researching, writing, and editing is a major skill for definers because it means that we must draw a line somewhere about which information is necessary for a dictionary definition and which is not. And when it comes to plants, I have trouble reining it in.

Let’s consider quackgrass. This was the first botanical entry I worked on, and it allowed us to begin drafting a template for flora and fauna entries that goes something like this: lexicographical genus + origin/distribution + physical differentiae + (optional) economic or cultural significance +: binomial name.

Now let’s break down those sections:

lexicographical genus

Not to be confused with the biological genus (which, in this case would be Elymus), the lexicographical genus is a simple abstraction of the plant/animal in question. For example, mosquito would have the genus fly. In the case of quackgrass, the genus is simply grass.

origin/distribution

We need to include some geographical information. Many lexicographers will classify species like quackgrass as “invasive.” But this is a cultural term dependent on socio-temporal contexts. So, we need to specify where the plants are native or invasive to. Quackgrass is native to Europe and Western Asia and invasive (i.e., hard to control, and causing environmental or economic harm) in Canada. If we were being really pedantic, we could also try to define when the plants migrated and became invasive, why humans came to transplant quackgrass to North America in the first place, and we could name some effective eradication methods…or we could meditate on why we privilege some types of nonnative grass monocultures over others…And here’s where I tell myself: Rein it in, Emma.

physical differentiae

Physical differentiae can help to distinguish easily identifiable visual features. For example, zebra mussels, as opposed to other mussels, have zebra-like stripes on their shells. But unless you’re an expert, quackgrass looks like most other grasses. The main distinguishing feature of quackgrass is its clasping auricle. And as much as I’d like to include “clasping auricle” in a definition, this is botanical jargon, likely unfamiliar to most readers. Including “clasping auricle” in a definition goes against one of our primary tenets at the CED: avoid using terms in a definition that are likely to force readers to look up their meaning. If I came across a dictionary where every word I looked up required a redirection to another word, the cycle could go on forever and I would get frustrated very quickly. So, in the case of quackgrass, we omit physical differentiae altogether and move right along to…

economic/cultural significance

Since quackgrass’s main cultural and economic significance is that it is invasive in Canada, we mention that it has an impact on Canadian agriculture. Here again, I resist the urge to examine why and how we value plant lives based purely on their usefulness/peskiness to us and whether or not it’s fair to demonize a plant because it disrupts our plans…(rein it in...).

binomial name

Finally, an easy step: Elymus repens.

And the final result: “a grass native to Europe and Western Asia, invasive with serious agricultural impact in Canada: Elymus repens”.

Since the CED will primarily be an online dictionary, you’d think that we have infinite space for detail, and so we shouldn’t worry about space. We could technically try to answer all the questions I’ve raised. But in online dictionaries, just as in paper dictionaries, users are looking for precise and concise information. Too much detail can be overwhelming. One of the most important parts of the definer’s job is to convey only the meaning that is essential to an understanding of a word. Have we done that with quackgrass? I hope so, but we find out more as we keep chugging along and encountering new words to define. If you want to know more, come back for my next post on queen bee.