bough
pronunciation
How to pronounce bough in British English:
UK [baʊ]
How to pronounce bough in American English:
US [baʊ]
-
- Noun:
- any of the larger branches of a tree
Word Origin
- bough
- bough: [OE] Bough is a word of some antiquity, dispersed far and wide throughout the Indo- European languages, but it is only in English that it has come to mean ‘branch’. It comes ultimately from an Indo-European *bhāghūs; the meaning this had is not altogether clear, but many of its descendants, such as Greek pakhus and Sanskrit bāhús, centre semantically round ‘arm’ or ‘forearm’ (a meaning element which can be discerned in the possibly related bosom).Germanic adopted the Indo-European form as *bōgus, with apparently a shift in signification up the arms towards the shoulders (Old English bōg, bōh, Old Norse bógr, and Middle Dutch boech all meant ‘shoulder’, and the Dutch word later came to be applied to the front of a ship – possibly the source of English bow).=> bosom, bow
- bough (n.)
- Old English bog "shoulder, arm," extended in Old English to "twig, branch" (compare limb (n.1)), from Proto-Germanic *bogaz (cognates: Old Norse bogr "shoulder," Old High German buog, German Bug "shoulder, hock, joint"), from PIE *bhagus "elbow, forearm" (cognates: Sanskrit bahus "arm," Armenian bazuk, Greek pakhys "forearm"). The "limb of a tree" sense is peculiar to English.
Example
- 1. The bough that bears most , hangs lowest .
- 2. Their lives are in our hands , bough .
- 3. Because I bough you a fresh one while you were sleeping .
- 4. You see before you a man happier than a little bird upon a bough .
- 5. They 're too far ahead of us.have faith , bough . They 're heading south .