noun
- Small seeds or pellets formerly believed to cause or cure gapes (a disease in birds); also, something of little value or importance.
Usage: archaic; chiefly historical
Examples
- The old remedy involved feeding gapeseeds to sick poultry.
- He dismissed the complaint as mere gapeseeds.
- Farmers in earlier centuries relied on gapeseeds as a folk cure.
- The apothecary sold gapeseeds to anyone worried about their birds.
- Such superstitions about gapeseeds have long since faded from practice.