Also 6–7 couche, 7 cooch, coich; see also QUITCH. [A variant (app. originating in the southern counties) of QUITCH:—OE. cwice; cf. the phonetic series swylc, swich, swuch, such.]
1. A species of grass (Triticum repens) with long creeping root-stocks, a common and troublesome weed in cornfields. Also applied to various other creeping grasses.
T. repens is sometimes distinguished as white couch; the name black couch being given to Alopecurus agrestis or Agrostis stolonifera.
1637. Heywood, Dial., Wks. 1874, VI. 266. Her browsing be the Brakes and bitter couche.
1794. Martyn, Rousseau’s Bot., xiii. 147. It is … generally execrated by husbandmen under the name of Couch, or Quich, which is but a corruption of Quick.
1776. Withering, Brit. Plants (1796), II. 132. In clayey arable lands this is a troublesome couch or squitch.
1846. J. Baxter, Libr. Pract. Agric. (ed. 4), II. 353. When the soil is very full of couch.
1881. Daily News, 4 June, 5/6. The couch will not be wholly eradicated in one year.
b. More commonly couch-grass.
1578. Lyte, Dodoens, IV. xliv. 503. Couche grasse … is a noughty and hurtful weede to corne.
1613. Heywood, Silv. Age, III. Wks. 1874, III. 140. Wheat, whose spykes the weed and cooch-grasse shall outgrow.
1877. Black, Green Past. (1878), I. 7. The whole place is overrun with couch-grass.
2. Comb., as couch-picking, -root; couch-onion, a name for Avena elatior or Haver-grass; couch-wheat, Triticum repens = COUCH-GRASS (see 1 b).
1807. Vancouver, Agric. Devon (1813), 153. To burn nothing but couch roots and other perennial rubbish.
1880. Jefferies, Hodge & M., II. 262. In the autumn comes … the couch-picking and burning.
1884. Miller, Plant-n., Couch, Couch-grass, or Couch-wheat, Triticum repens. Ibid., Avena elatior, Button-Grass, Couch Onion, Haver-Grass, Onion-Grass, Pearl-Grass.
