millet Meaning, Definition & Usage

  1. noun any of various small-grained annual cereal and forage grasses of the genera Panicum, Echinochloa, Setaria, Sorghum, and Eleusine
  2. noun French painter of rural scenes (1814-1875)
    Jean Francois Millet.
  3. noun small seed of any of various annual cereal grasses especially Setaria italica

WordNet

Mil"let noun
Etymology
F., dim. of mil, L. milium; akin to Gr. , AS. mil.
Definitions
  1. (Bot.) 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. all species in this note are subtypes ✍ Arabian millet is Sorghum Halepense. -- Egyptian or East Indian, millet is Penicillaria spicata. -- Indian millet is Sorghum vulgare. (See under 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.

Webster 1913