Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A low shrub with many branches.
  • noun A thick growth of shrubs; a thicket.
  • noun Land covered with dense vegetation or undergrowth.
  • noun Land remote from settlement.
  • noun A shaggy mass, as of hair.
  • noun Vulgar Slang A growth of pubic hair.
  • noun A fox's tail.
  • noun Archaic A clump of ivy hung outside a tavern to indicate the availability of wine inside.
  • noun Obsolete A tavern.
  • intransitive verb To grow or branch out like a bush.
  • intransitive verb To extend in a bushy growth.
  • intransitive verb To decorate, protect, or support with bushes.
  • adjective Slang Bush-league; second-rate.
  • transitive verb To furnish or line with a bushing.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To furnish with a bush; line (an orifice, as one in which a pivot or axle works) with metal to prevent abrasion or to reduce the diameter.
  • To grow thick or bushy; serve or show as a bush.
  • To set bushes about; support with bushes or branched sticks: as, to bush peas.
  • 2. To use a bush-harrow on: as, to bush a piece of wood.
  • 3. To cover (seeds) by using a bush-harrow: as, to bush in seeds.
  • To dress a stone with a bush-hammer.
  • noun In milling, a packing of wooden blocks placed in the eye of the bedstone and forming the upper bearing of the spindle.
  • noun A thicket; a clump of shrubs or trees.
  • noun A shrub with branches; a thick shrub; technically, a low and much-branched shrub.
  • noun A stretch of forest or of shrubby vegetation: a district covered with brushwood, or shrubs, trees, etc.; a wide uncultivated tract of country covered with scrub: as, the bush was here very dense; to take to the bush (to become a bush-ranger): so used especially in the British colonies of Australasia.
  • noun A branch of a tree fixed or hung out as a tavern sign. See ale-stake and ale-garland.
  • noun Hence The tavern itself.
  • noun The tail or brush of a fox.
  • noun A lining of harder material let into an orifice to guard against wearing by friction; the perforated box or tube of metal fitted into certain parts of machinery, as the pivot-holes of a clock, the center of a cart-wheel, etc., to receive the wear of pivots, journals, and the like. Also called
  • noun A tailors' thimble. Also called bushel.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • intransitive verb To branch thickly in the manner of a bush.
  • noun (Mech.) A lining for a hole to make it smaller; a thimble or ring of metal or wood inserted in a plate or other part of machinery to receive the wear of a pivot or arbor.
  • noun (Gun.) A piece of copper, screwed into a gun, through which the venthole is bored.
  • transitive verb To furnish with a bush, or lining.
  • noun A thicket, or place abounding in trees or shrubs; a wild forest.
  • noun A shrub; esp., a shrub with branches rising from or near the root; a thick shrub or a cluster of shrubs.
  • noun A shrub cut off, or a shrublike branch of a tree.
  • noun A shrub or branch, properly, a branch of ivy (as sacred to Bacchus), hung out at vintners' doors, or as a tavern sign; hence, a tavern sign, and symbolically, the tavern itself.
  • noun (Hunting) The tail, or brush, of a fox.
  • noun to approach anything in a round-about manner, instead of coming directly to it; -- a metaphor taken from hunting.
  • noun (Bot.) a variety of bean which is low and requires no support (Phaseolus vulgaris, variety nanus). See Bean, 1.
  • noun (Zoöl.) a beautiful South African antelope (Tragelaphus sylvaticus); -- so called because found mainly in wooden localities. The name is also applied to other species.
  • noun (Zoöl.) the serval. See Serval.
  • noun (Zoöl.) a bird of the genus Pratincola, of the Thrush family.
  • noun (Zoöl.) See Potto.
  • noun See Bushhammer in the Vocabulary.
  • noun (Agric.) See under Harrow.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, partly from Old English busc, partly from Old French bois, wood (of Germanic origin), and partly of Scandinavian origin (akin to Danish busk). N., sense 3, possibly from Dutch bosch.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From bush, bushing, possibly alteration of Dutch bus, box.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

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

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle 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.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English busch, busshe, from Old English busc, bysc ("copse, grove, scrub", in placenames), from Proto-Germanic *buskaz (“bush, thicket”), probably from Proto-Indo-European *bhū- (“to grow”). Cognate with West Frisian bosk ("woods"), Dutch bos ("woods"), German Busch ("bush"), Swedish buske ("bush, shrub"). Latin and Romance forms (Latin boscus, French bois and buisson, Italian bosco and boscaglia, Spanish bosque, Portuguese bosque) derive from the Germanic. The sense 'pubic hair' was first attested in 1745.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle Dutch busse 'box; wheel bushing', from Proto-Germanic *buhsiz (cf. English box). More at box.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Back-formation from bush league.

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Examples

  • PRACTICE IN FRONT OF A BUSH wait until the moon is out, then go outside, eat a multi-grained bread and play your guitar to a bush. if the bush doesn't shake, eat another piece of bread.

    Holly Cara Price: Woe-Is-A-Me-Bop: RIP Captain Beefheart Holly Cara Price 2010

  • PRACTICE IN FRONT OF A BUSH wait until the moon is out, then go outside, eat a multi-grained bread and play your guitar to a bush. if the bush doesn't shake, eat another piece of bread.

    Holly Cara Price: Woe-Is-A-Me-Bop: RIP Captain Beefheart Holly Cara Price 2010

  • If she had responded that she was intimately familiar with all BUSH policies and terminology, you would have just claimed MORE OF THE SAME, like she was reading from the bush play book.

    Live Blog from the Anchor Desk 9/11/08 2008

  • The Bush Library by Ed Martin on Saturday, Feb 17, 2007 at 7: 37: 50 PM like with everything bush ... by elena dumas on Saturday, Feb 17, 2007 at 8: 00: 56 PM

    Take the Sneak Preview of the Bush Library 2007

  • Bush Drops Town Hall Meeting with Germans you would think that since bush likes freedom so much he would welcome average germans to ask what questions they want. oh, and also, no journalists allowed.

    Bush Drops Town Hall Meeting with Germans mat 2005

  • When we had watched for some moments their happy gambols, Mr.C. turned around and broke a twig from a bush that stood behind us; "_there is a bush_," said he, "_which has committed many a murder_."

    The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus American Anti-Slavery Society

  • BOGLE ABOUT THE BUSH, beat about the bush, a children's game.

    Waverley — Volume 2 Walter Scott 1801

  • BOGLE ABOUT THE BUSH, beat about the bush, a children's game.

    Waverley Walter Scott 1801

  • BOGLE ABOUT THE BUSH, beat about the bush, a children's game.

    Waverley — Complete Walter Scott 1801

  • FUNNY BUSH COMEDY HAHAHA president bush usa funny hilarious idiot stupid quotes impersonation comedy abc fat comedian parody satire satirical bill clinton monica lewinsky sex scandal suit india cricket team soccer skills tricks actuary actuarial politics speech parliament john howard kevin rudd election inflation rate

    WN.com - Business News 2010

Comments

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  • The bush is the countryside - hence bushwhacking.

    January 17, 2007

  • A newly-discovered preposition, at least in Australian English. The sentence Geoffrey Pullum found it in is: 'On hatching, the chicks scramble to the surface and head bush on their own.'

    So it's behaving quite like another intransitive preposition, 'home'.

    January 10, 2009

  • I think "out to the" is implied here, and it might better be "bushward," but that's too formal-sounding for Australians.

    Those darn Australians, always shortening things and using slang...

    January 10, 2009