bud

Meanings

1. 1
   verb

   to start to grow or develop

   The tree is budding.

2. 2
   verb

   to develop buds

   The hibiscus is budding!

3. 3
   noun

   A newly sprouted leaf or blossom that has not yet unfolded.

   After a long, cold winter, the trees finally began to produce buds.

4. 4
   noun

   Something that has begun to develop.

   breast buds

5. 5
   noun

   A small rounded body in the process of splitting from an organism, which may grow into a genetically identical new organism.

   In this slide, you can see a yeast cell forming buds.

6. 6
   noun

   Potent cannabis taken from the flowering part of the plant (the "bud"), or marijuana generally.

   You got any buds?

7. 7
   noun

   A pretty young girl.

   My pretty bud was unfolding and I was not there to see it. She was developing so rapidly, I felt I could not be from her a day without missing some sweetness that could never come again.

8. 8
   verb

   To form buds.

   The trees are finally starting to bud.

Etymology

From Middle English budde, bodde (“bud, seed pod”), from Old English *budde, from Proto-West Germanic *buʀdā, from Proto-Germanic *buzdǭ (compare archaic German Butte (“rosehip”), Swedish dialect bodd (“head”)), perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *bʰew-, *bu- (“to swell”). Compare also German Low German Butte, Butt (“bud”), Dutch bot (“bud”), regional German Butz, Butzen (“seed pod; apple core”), German Low German Haagbutt ("rosehip"; Haagbudden (“rosehips”, plural)).