bush

• IPA^(key): /bʊʃ/

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• Rhymes: -ʊʃ

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”).

Cognate with West Frisian bosk (“forest”), Dutch bos (“forest”), German Busch (“bush”), Danish and Norwegian busk (“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. The sense 'pubic hair' was first attested in 1745.

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:

     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. (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.
   • c. 1598–1600 (date written), William Shakespeare, “As You Like It”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene iv]:

     If it be true that good wine needs no bush, 'tis true that a good play needs no epilogue.

   • 1837, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], “Chapter IV. The Fête.”, in Ethel Churchill: Or, The Two Brides. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 31:

     "Well," replied Lady Mary, "who is to know where good wine is sold, unless you hang out the bush."

4. (slang, vulgar) A person's pubic hair, especially a woman's.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:pubic hair

   • 1749, [John Cleland], “(Please specify the letter or volume)”, in Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure [Fanny Hill], London: […] G. Fenton [i.e., Fenton and Ralph Griffiths] […], →OCLC:

     As he stood on one side, unbuttoning his waistcoat and breeches, her fat brawny thighs hung down, and the whole greasy landscape lay fairly open to my view; a wide open mouthed gap, overshaded with a grizzly bush, seemed held out like a beggar′s wallet for its 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

5. (hunting) The tail, or brush, of a fox.

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.

• good wine needs no bush

From older Dutch bosch (modern bos (“wood, forest”)), first appearing in the Dutch colonies to designate an uncleared district of a colony, and thence adopted in British colonies as bush. Could alternatively be interpreted as a semantic loan, as bush (etymology 1) is cognate to the aforementioned archaic Dutch bosch.

bush (countable and uncountable, plural bushes)

1. (often with "the") Tracts of land covered in natural vegetation that are largely undeveloped and uncultivated.
   • 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.
      • 1894, Henry Lawson, “We Called Him “Ally” for Short”, in Short Stories in Prose and Verse‎:

        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.

      • 1899, Ethel C. Pedley, Dot and the Kangaroo‎:

        Little Dot had lost her way in the bush.

      • 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:

        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 woodlot or bluff on a farm.

• bushman (not derived from bush but separately derived from cognate Dutch)

• → Dutch: bush, bushbush

• backblock, outback

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.

• (washer or cylinder): bushing

• reducing bush

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

• Shub, hubs

• bushk

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

• IPA^(key): /buʃ/

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

1. (botany) boxwood (Buxus sempervirens)

• bushtë
• bushnjesh
• bushk

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

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

1. a mythological monster

• bushtër

• bisht

• bushu, bushtu

Compare Romanian buș.

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

1. fist

• shub, pulmu, huftã, mãnatã

• IPA^(key): [buʃ]

bush بشنگو (bushongo) pl

1. cat

• gus bush
• hir bush
• bushe isko

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

• buss, bosh, buish, boish, busk, bosk

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

• IPA^(key): /buʃ/

bush (plural bushes)

1. bush (low-lying plant)

• English: bush
• Scots: bus
• Yola: bushe

• “bush, n.(1).”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.