A garden machine for cutting grass and weeds in the awkward places a lawnmower cannot reach — along a wall, around a tree trunk, on a slope, at the edge of a path. You hold it in both hands on a long shaft and swing it slowly side to side just above the ground. What actually does the cutting is not a blade but a piece of thick plastic string spinning very fast, which is why it makes that high buzzing sound and why it can cut grass without breaking when it hits a stone.

This is a British word, and it started as a company's trademark, so you will often see it written with a capital S. In everyday British speech people have stopped thinking of it as a brand and just call any such machine a strimmer, small s. Americans do not use the word at all: they say weed whacker, weed eater, or string trimmer. In Taiwan the machine is everywhere — you hear it at every cemetery before 清明節 — but the English word most people here have met is the American one.

It is also a verb in Britain: 'I need to strim the edges this weekend.'