bush - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

A bush (woody plant)

From Middle English bush, from Old English *busċ, *bysċ (“copse, grove, scrub”, in placenames), from Proto-West Germanic *busk, from Proto-Germanic *buskaz (“bush, thicket”), probably from Proto-Indo-European *bʰuH- (“to grow”). Doublet of bosque.

Cognates

Cognate with Saterland Frisian Busk (“bush”), West Frisian bosk (“forest”), Dutch bos (“forest, wood”), German Busch (“bush, shrub; small forest, grove”), Luxembourgish Bësch (“forest, wood”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, and Norwegian Nynorsk busk (“bush, shrub”), Icelandic buski (“bush, shrub”), Swedish buske (“bush, shrub”), Persian بیشه (bêša/biše, “woods”). Latin and Romance forms (Latin boscus, Occitan bòsc, French bois, bûche and buisson, Italian bosco and boscaglia, Spanish bosque, Portuguese bosque) derive from the Germanic.

Compare typologically Russian за́росли (zárosli) (akin to расти́ (rastí)). Also compare Russian быльё (bylʹjó) (distantly cognate via *bʰuH-).

bush (plural bushes)

  1. (horticulture) A woody plant distinguished from a tree by its multiple stems and lower height, being usually less than six metres tall; a horticultural rather than strictly botanical category.
    Synonym: shrub
    • 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter I, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC, page 18:
      I stumbled along through the young pines and huckleberry bushes. Pretty soon I struck into a sort of path that, I cal'lated, might lead to the road I was hunting for. It twisted and turned, and, the first thing I knew, made a sudden bend around a bunch of bayberry scrub and opened out into a big clear space like a lawn.
  2. A shrub cut off, or a shrublike branch of a tree.
    bushes to support pea vines
  3. (archaic or dialectal and in placenames) A thicket, a small wood, or a tract of uncleared, woody land.
    • 1894, S. R. Crockett, The Raiders:
      We saw a bush of wood, and in the heart of it a little open space.
  4. (historical) A shrub or branch, properly, a branch of ivy (sacred to Bacchus), hung out at vintners' doors, or as a tavern sign; hence, a tavern sign, and symbolically, the tavern itself.
  5. (slang, vulgar) A person's pubic hair, especially a woman's. [from 1745][1]
    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:pubic hair
    • 1749, [John Cleland], “[Letter the First]”, in Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure [Fanny Hill], volume I, London: […] [Thomas Parker] for G. Fenton [_i.e._, Fenton and Ralph Griffiths] […], →OCLC, page 65:
      As he ſtood on one ſide for a minute or ſo, unbuttoning his waſte-coat, and breeches, her fat brawny thighs hung down, and the whole greaſy landſkip lay fairly open to my view: a wide open-mouth'd gap, overſhaded with a grizzly buſh, ſeemed held out like a beggar's wallet for its'[_sic_] proviſion.
    • 1941, Henry Miller, Under the Roofs of Paris (Opus Pistorum), New York: Grove Press, published 1983, page 27:
      I rub her bush with my cheek and my chin, tickle her bonne-bouche with my tongue.
    • 1982, Lawrence Durrell, Constance (Avignon Quintet), Faber & Faber, published 2004, page 787:
      But no, the little pool of semen was there, proof positive, with droplets caught hanging in her bush.
    • 2002, “The Seed (2.0)”, in Phrenology, performed by The Roots:
      I push my seed in her bush for life / It's gonna work because I'm pushing it right
    • 2025 September 3, “Wok Is Dead”, in South Park, season 27, episode 4, spoken by Butters:
      I think on Saturday I'm gonna find out if red-haired girls have a red bush!
  6. (hunting) The tail, or brush, of a fox.

category of woody plant

pubic hair

bush (third-person singular simple present bushes, present participle bushing, simple past and past participle bushed)

  1. (intransitive) To branch thickly in the manner of a bush.
    • 1726, Homer, “The Odyssey”, in Alexander Pope, transl., edited by Samuel Johnson, The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope, Esq., published 1839, page 404:
      Around it, and above, for ever green, / The bushing alders form'd a shady scene.
  2. To set bushes for; to support with bushes.
    to bush peas
  3. To use a bush harrow on (land), for covering seeds sown; to harrow with a bush.
    to bush a piece of land; to bush seeds into the ground
  4. To become bushy (often used with up).
    I can tell when my cat is upset because he’ll bush up his tail.

From the sign of a bush usually employed to indicate such places.

bush (plural bushes)

  1. (archaic) A tavern or wine merchant.

A semantic expansion of bush (see Etymology 1, archaic and dialectal sense of “thicket” or “small wood”), which survived in English dialects and London‐area toponyms (such as Shepherd’s Bush). In its native English form, the term inherently denoted a scrubby, localized feature. In British colonies, this specific sense was applied to the broader landscape, evolving into a mass noun for the wilderness. This development was likely reinforced by, or originated as a semantic loan from, the cognate older Dutch bosch (modern bos (“wood, forest”)), which had undergone a similar semantic shift in the Dutch settlements of North America (such as New Netherland) and later the Cape Colony. From the North American Dutch loan, English acquired the concept of “the bush” as a vast, untamed wilderness. Evidence of this early linguistic integration appears in late 17th‐century English records via compound calques from both major Dutch contact zones: the 1695 North American use of “bushloopers” (anglicized from Dutch boschlooper (“woods‐runner”)) and the 1699 Cape Colony reference to “Wild‐bush‐Men” (translating Cape Dutch Bosjesman). However, as an independent topographical noun describing the South African landscape, the English term is not securely attested until circa 1780.

In Australian English, the term was used as early as 1790 by First Lieutenant Ralph Clark. As a native of Edinburgh, Clark would have been familiar with the Scots cognates buss and bush (retaining the archaic sense of a wood or clump of trees); this native linguistic framework likely made him highly receptive to the broader Dutch usage he encountered during his prior military service in the Netherlands and North America. Australia served as the crucible where these semantic threads merged. The widely spaced, scrubby eucalypt woodlands perfectly matched the native British English visual of a low‐canopied thicket, while their vastness fulfilled the Dutch concept of an untamed expanse. This convergence caused the term to rapidly supplant the traditional English woods and forest, as the open Australian landscape differed markedly from the dense, deciduous canopies of Europe. Via early 19th‐century trans‐Tasman trade and settlement routes out of New South Wales, the term was subsequently exported to New Zealand, where it was applied to the region’s dense, temperate rainforests.

The adverbial usage of the term (dropping the preposition and article, as in go bush or head bush) likely originated in early 19th‐century New South Wales Pidgin. As documented by contact linguists, this syntax reflects typical pidginization (preposition deletion) alongside the substrate influence of Indigenous Australian languages, which frequently utilize absolute locatives or directional adverbs rather than prepositions for spatial movement. From this contact language, the grammatical shorthand permeated the broader colonial vernacular.

bush (countable and uncountable, plural bushes)

  1. (chiefly Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, Alaska, often with “the”) Tracts of land covered in natural vegetation that are largely undeveloped and uncultivated, typically distinguished from absolute wilderness by implying a degree of marginal human engagement or proximity to settlement edges.
    • 1779, Solomon Lovell, The Original Journal of General Solomon Lovell, Kept During the Penobscot Expedition, 1779: With a Sketch of His Life by Gilbert Nash, Weymouth, Mass.: Weymouth Historical Society, published 1881, page 102:
      The Gentlemen took to the Bush and escaped being made prisoners.
    • 1899 February, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number M, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, […], →OCLC, part I, page 199:
      Mad terror had scattered them, men, women, and children, through the bush, and they had never returned.
    1. (Australia) The countryside area of Australia that is less arid and less remote than the outback; loosely, areas of natural flora even within conurbations.
      • 1790, Ralph Clark, Journal‎[1]:
        (Davis) my Convict Servant who was in the Boat with me begd of me not to goe on Shore he is one of the greatest Cowards living I cald to them again when I got to ther fire for the[y] had run into the bush on there Seing the Boat pulling towards them
      • 1894, Henry Lawson, “We Called Him "Ally" for Short”, in Short Stories in Prose and Verse‎[2]:
        I remember, about five years ago, I was greatly annoyed by a ghost, while doing a job of fencing in the bush between here and Perth.
      • 2000, Robert Holden, Paul Cliff, Jack Bedson, The Endless Playground: Celebrating Australian Childhood, page 16:
        The theme of children lost in the bush is a well-worked one in Australian art and literature.
      • 2021 September 6, “Australian farmers under pressure from climate change”, in Australian Herald‎[4], archived from the original on 7 September 2021:
        The findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggest Australia may have to jettison tracts of the bush unless there is a massive investment in climate-change adaptation and planning.
    2. (New Zealand) An area of New Zealand covered in forest, especially native forest.
    3. (Canada) The wild forested areas of Canada; upcountry.
  2. (Canada) A wood lot or bluff on a farm.
    Synonym: bushlot
    Hyponym: sugarbush

bush (not comparable)

  1. (Australia) Towards the direction of the outback.
    On hatching, the chicks scramble to the surface and head bush on their own.

Back-formation from bush league.

bush (comparative more bush, superlative most bush)

  1. (colloquial) Not skilled; not professional; not major league.
    They’re supposed to be a major league team, but so far they've been bush.

bush

  1. (baseball) Amateurish behavior, short for bush league behavior

From Middle Dutch busse (“box; wheel bushing”), from Proto-West Germanic *buhsā. More at box.

bush (plural bushes)

  1. A thick washer or hollow cylinder of metal.
  2. A mechanical attachment, usually a metallic socket with a screw thread, such as the mechanism by which a camera is attached to a tripod stand.
  3. A piece of copper, screwed into a gun, through which the venthole is bored.

bush (third-person singular simple present bushes, present participle bushing, simple past and past participle bushed)

  1. (transitive) To furnish with a bush or lining; to line.
    to bush a pivot hole

  2. ^ Douglas Harper (2001–2026), “bush (n.)”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.

Either borrowed through Vulgar Latin from Latin buxus,[1] or from Proto-Indo-European *bʰuH (“to grow”) (compare Dutch bos (“woods”), English bush).

bush m (plural bushe, definite bushi, definite plural bushet)

  1. (botany) boxwood (Buxus sempervirens)

Possibly from Proto-Indo-European *bʰuH (“to grow”).

bush m (plural busha, definite bushi, definite plural bushat)

  1. a mythological swamp dwelling monster which takes the form of a steer
  1. ^ Orel, Vladimir (1998), “bush”, in Albanian Etymological Dictionary, Leiden; Boston; Köln: Brill, →ISBN, page 42

Antigua and Barbuda Creole English

[edit]

bush (plural **bush dem, quantified **bush)

  1. bush, bushland

Compare Romanian buș.

bush m (plural *bush) or n (plural bushi/*bushe**)

  1. fist

bush بشنگو (bushongo) pl

  1. cat

Sadaf Munshi (2015), “Word Lists”, in Burushaski Language Documentation Project‎[5].

Borrowed from Middle English bush, from Old English *busċ, *bysċ, from Proto-West Germanic *busk, from Proto-Germanic *buskaz. Doublet of bos (“bush”).

bush m (plural bushys)

  1. bush
  2. crowd, mass

From Old English *busċ, *bysċ, from Proto-West Germanic *busk. Cognates include Middle Dutch bosch, busch, Middle High German busch, bosch, and also Old French bois, buisson.

bush (plural bushes)

  1. Bush, shrub (low-lying woody plant).
  2. A thicket, copse, or small wood; a dense grove of trees.
  3. (often in placenames) A tract of uncultivated, woody land.