A cleaning implement with a long handle and bristles, or a yellow-flowered shrub.
From Old English 'brom' referring to the broom plant, whose bundled twigs were used for sweeping. The cleaning tool took its name from the plant material traditionally used to make it.
Before manufactured brooms, people literally tied together branches of the broom plant (Cytisus scoparius) to sweep their homes - the tool's name preserves this botanical origin story that most people never realize.
Broom-making was historically gendered 'women's work,' reinforced by the fairy tale trope of witches and domestic service imagery. Cultural associations persist in dismissive phrases like 'broom closet.'
Use neutrally as a tool; avoid metaphors that link domestic labor to feminine subservience or mockery.
["cleaning implement","sweeping tool"]
Women have led industrial broom manufacturing and labor organization; broom-makers' unions included significant female membership and activism in the 20th century.
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