besom

Etymology

From Middle English besme, beseme, from Old English besma, besema (“besom, broom, rod”), from Proto-West Germanic *besmō (“broom”).

noun

1. A broom made from a bundle of twigs tied onto a shaft.
2. (Scotland, Northern England, derogatory) A troublesome woman.
   "Eh, but she was a besom, if a' tales be true !" 1903, Samuel Rutherford Crockett, The Dark O' the Moon: A Novel, page 130
   Janet's eyes began to look dim, and I had to frown at her very hard; then I had to turn my frown on Jean ... and Janet, the besom, took advantage of my divided attention. 1917, A.S. Neill., A Dominie Dismissed, page 10
   Uncle Angus went on about the behavior of the car. "She's a besom, a proper besom, her and her gears. She'll be the death of me yet one of these days." 1963, Margaret McLean MacPherson, The Shinty Boys, page 187
   "She's a besom but no' bad at times, like now," Agnes said as she bit into a dough-ring. 2013, Nora Kay, Best Friends
3. Any cleansing or purifying agent.
   The march of an army through a conquered country supposing it to be a highly civilized one, is a besom of destruction, whose havoc, moral and material, it would take at least a century to recover. 1851, “A Few Words about War and the Peace Congress.”, in Littell’s Living Age, volume 28, page 364

verb

1. (archaic, poetic) To sweep.
   Now, in her iceberg-white, holily laundered crinoline nightgown, under virtuous polar sheets, in her spruced and scoured dust-defying bedroom in trig and trim Bay View, a house for paying guests at the top of the town, Mrs Ogmore-Prichard widow, twice, of Mr Ogmore, linolium, retired, and Mr Prichard, failed bookmaker, who maddened by besoming, swabbing and scrubbing, the voice of the vacuum-cleaner and the fume of polish, ironically swallowed disinfectant... 1954, Dylan Thomas, Under Milk Wood, page 13