[ad. L. spart-um or Sp. esparto. Cf. SPARTO and SPARTUM.]

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  1.  Esparto. Also spart-grass.

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  In quot. 1601 ship-sparts are simply ‘cables,’ Pliny’s navium sparta being a direct citation of the Homeric νεῶν σπάρτα (Iliad ii. 135).

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1600.  Holland, Livy, XXII. xx. 444. They found great store of Spart [to make cables] provided and laid up there by Asdruball to serve the navie. Ibid. (1601), Pliny, II. 188. I wot not well whether Homer meant it, when he said, that the ship-sparts were vntwisted and loose. For this is certain, that neither the spart of Africk, ne yet the Spanish spart was as yet in any vse.

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1809.  trans. Laborde’s View Spain, i. 9. A plain … fertile in flax and spart, or sea-rush.

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1866.  Treas. Bot., 1076/2. Spart, the Esparto.

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1909.  Vernon Lee, in Eng. Rev., Feb., 462. Discussing the while the olive harvest, the price of spart-grass and the chances of the bull-ring.

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  ¶ 2.  Spanish broom. Also spart-broom. Obs.

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1601.  Holland, Pliny, II. 6. The nature of Spart or Spanish broome. Ibid. (1603), Plutarch’s Mor., 156. The Roper … suffereth an asse behind him to gnaw and eate a rope as fast as he twisteth it of the Spartbroome.

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1611.  Florio, Genéstra, Spart or Spanish-broome.

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1726.  Leoni, Alberti’s Archit., I. 58. Under these we ought to lay Fern, or Spart, to keep the mortar from rotting the Timber. Ibid., 93. Spart and rushes shred small.

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