When pollen is carried into the air by the wind, it frequently causes allergic reactions (see allergy) in humans.
1515–25; < New Latin, special use of Latin: fine flour, mill dust
Pollen is the grainy stuff inside a flowering plant that makes it possible for the plant to reproduce. Insects, birds, people, and the wind help to spread pollen between plants. When pollen spreads to the female part of a plant, it germinates, or begins the process of growing a new plant. When pollen spreads like this, it's called pollination, and it's how plants reproduce. Pollen is great for plants but not so great if you have hay fever, an allergy to pollen. The first meaning of pollen was "fine flour," which is what pollen looks like.
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They also compared tree pollen with fern spores to determine whether the darkening might have been caused by biological differences between plant groups.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 22, 2026
Air pollution, wildfire smoke, industrial disasters like the East Palestine, Ohio train wreck and extended pollen seasons are all reasons why people are increasingly concerned with making their indoor environments actually breathable.
From Salon ● Jul. 19, 2026
There’s a purpose to the stench: attracting flies and beetles to help carry pollen.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 10, 2026
In addition to the heat many are also struggling with the high levels of pollen.
From BBC ● Jul. 9, 2026
Hugh blows the yucca pollen off his blackened shrimp while I push back the sleeves of my borrowed sport coat and search the meat tower for my promised potatoes.
From "Me Talk Pretty One Day" by David Sedaris
Pollen collected by bumblebees contained between two and seven times more heavy metals than pollen collected by honeybees across most of the metals examined.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 7, 2026
In the first decade of the 20th century, two brilliant English civilians, Arthur Pollen and Harold Isherwood, invented the world’s first modern gunnery computer to aim the big guns of battleships.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 10, 2026
Pollen and Isherwood’s resolution to export gave the navy of the other noisiest champion—the U.S.—the opportunity to pirate them too.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 10, 2026
But, Ms Pollen said, foster care was a huge part of why Fern and her pups were doing so well.
From BBC ● Jan. 1, 2026
They made Pollen Boy right in the center of the white corn painting.
From "Ceremony:" by Leslie Marmon Silko
It is estimated that 13 million people in the UK suffer from hay fever - an allergy to different pollens.
From BBC ● May 30, 2025
Some of the most common tree pollens that cause allergies include birch, cedar, cottonwood, maple, elm, oak and walnut, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.
From Seattle Times ● Mar. 22, 2024
“We’ve now got three different dating techniques—radiocarbon dating of the seeds, radiocarbon dating of the pollens and luminescence dating of the quartz—that all show people were there.”
From Scientific American ● Oct. 5, 2023
He was commiserating with a friend in 2018 about his allergies to cats, dust, and pollens, and how things had gotten so bad in his teen years that he tried shots.
From Salon ● Aug. 15, 2023
Bees eagerly seek this, one of the earliest pollens.
From Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 by Northern Nut Growers Association
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
