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millet

(Science: botany) The name of several cereal and forage grasses which bear an abundance of small roundish grains. The common millets of Germany and southern Europe are panicum miliaceum, and setaria Italica.

Arabian millet is sorghum Halepense. Egyptian or East indian, millet is Penicillaria spicata. Indian millet is Sorghum vulgare. (See Indian) Italian millet is setaria Italica, a coarse, rank-growing annual grass, valuable for fodder when cut young, and bearing nutritive seeds; called also Hungarian grass. Texas millet is panicum Texanum. Wild millet, or Millet grass, is milium effusum, a tail grass growing in woods.

Origin: F, dim. Of mil, L. Milium; akin to Gr, AS. Mil.