bush
pronunciation
How to pronounce bush in British English:
UK [bʊʃ]
How to pronounce bush in American English:
US [bʊʃ]
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- Noun:
- a low woody perennial plant usually having several major branches
- a large wilderness area
- dense vegetation consisting of stunted trees or bushes
- hair growing in the pubic area
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- Verb:
- provide with a bushing
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- Adjective:
- not of the highest quality or sophistication
Word Origin
- bush
- bush: [13] Bush comes ultimately from a prehistoric Germanic *busk-, which also produced German busch ‘bush’. There is no actual record of the word in Old English, but it probably existed as *bysc. The Germanic base was also borrowed into the Romance languages, where in French it eventually produced bois ‘wood’. A diminutive form of this gave English bouquet [18], while a variant bosc may have been at least partly responsible for the now archaic English bosky ‘wooded’ [16]. A derived Vulgar Latin verb *imboscāre gave English ambush.=> ambush, bouquet, oboe
- bush (n.)
- "many-stemmed woody plant," Old English bysc, from West Germanic *busk "bush, thicket" (cognates: Old Saxon and Old High German busc, Dutch bosch, bos, German Busch). Influenced by or combined with cognate words from Scandinavian (such as Old Norse buskr, Danish busk, but this might be from West Germanic) and Old French (busche "firewood," apparently of Frankish origin), and also perhaps Anglo-Latin bosca "firewood," from Medieval Latin busca (whence Italian bosco, Spanish bosque, French bois), which apparently also was borrowed from West Germanic; compare Boise. In British American colonies, applied from 1650s to the uncleared districts, hence "country," as opposed to town (1780); probably originally from Dutch bosch in the same sense, because it seems to appear first in English in former Dutch colonies. Meaning "pubic hair" (especially of a woman) is from 1745. To beat the bushes (mid-15c.) is a way to rouse birds so that they fly into the net which others are holding, which originally was the same thing as beating around the bush (see beat (v.)).
Example
- 1. George bush in relaxed mood before becoming president .
- 2. Elephants and buffalo occasionally came bulldozing out of the bush .
- 3. Vast swathes of bush and jungle are ungoverned .
- 4. Its staff shrank under george bush .
- 5. President bush says wall st got drunk .