Definitions

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

  • noun A woody plant of relatively low height, having several stems arising from the base and lacking a single trunk; a bush.
  • noun A beverage made from fruit juice, sugar, and a liquor such as rum or brandy.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To prune down so that a shrubby form shall be preserved.
  • To reduce (a person) to poverty by winning his whole stock: a word used at play.
  • An obsolete form of scrub.
  • noun A drink or cordial prepared from the juice of fruit and various other ingredients.
  • noun A cordial or syrup consisting of the acid juice of some fruit, as the raspberry, cooked with sugar and vinegar, and diluted with water when used.
  • noun A woody plant with stems branched from or near the ground, and, in general, smaller than a tree; a bush, or woody vine.
  • noun Synonyms Bush, Herb, etc. See vegetable, n.
  • To clear land of small growth by cutting it off at the ground.

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

  • noun A liquor composed of vegetable acid, especially lemon juice, and sugar, with spirit to preserve it.
  • transitive verb obsolete To lop; to prune.
  • noun (Bot.) A woody plant of less size than a tree, and usually with several stems from the same root.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A liquor composed of vegetable acid, fruit juice (especially lemon), sugar, sometimes vinegar, and a small amount of spirit as a preservative. Modern shrub is usually non-alcoholic, but in earlier times it was often mixed with a substantial amount of spirit such as brandy or rum, thus making it a liqueur.
  • noun A woody plant smaller than a tree, and usually with several stems from the same base.
  • verb obsolete To lop; to prune.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a low woody perennial plant usually having several major stems

Etymologies

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

[Middle English schrubbe, from Old English scrybb; see sker- in Indo-European roots.]

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

[From Arabic šurb, a drink, from šariba, to drink; see śrb in Semitic roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Arabic شراب (shiraab, "a drink, beverage"), شرب (sháriba, "to drink"), akin to sirup, sherbet

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old English schrob scrob, or scrobb; akin to Norwegian skrubba the dwarf cornel tree

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Examples

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  • “The Romans diluted acetified wine with water to make an everyday thirst quencher called posca, and vinegar has been touted as a cure-all in Asia and Europe for centuries. The practice was brought to the Colonies from England, where it was commonly referred to as shrub, a term confusingly used both for a nonalcoholic drink and for one mixed with rum. In the United States, shrub seems to have thrived particularly in the South, gaining enormous popularity with the temperance movement. Many Southerners still fondly remember a grandmother making up ‘raspberry vinegar’ in the summer.�?

    The New York Times, Dropping Acid, by Toby Cecchini, November 11, 2008

    November 13, 2008