bush

Meanings

1. 1
   verb

   to provide with a bushing

   We bushed it.

2. 2
   noun

   A woody plant distinguished from a tree by its multiple stems and lower height, being usually less than six metres tall; a horticultural rather than strictly botanical category.

   I stumbled along through the young pines and huckleberry bushes. Pretty soon I struck into a sort of path that, I cal'lated, might lead to the road I was hunting for. It twisted and turned, and, the first thing I knew, made a sudden bend around a bunch of bayberry scrub and opened out into a big clear space like a lawn.

3. 3
   noun

   A shrub cut off, or a shrublike branch of a tree.

   bushes to support pea vines

4. 4
   noun

   A thicket, a small wood, or a tract of uncleared, woody land.

   We saw a bush of wood, and in the heart of it a little open space.

5. 5
   noun

   A shrub or branch, properly, a branch of ivy (sacred to Bacchus), hung out at vintners' doors, or as a tavern sign; hence, a tavern sign, and symbolically, the tavern itself.

   If it be true, that good wine needs no buſh, 'tis true, that a good play needes no Epilogue.

6. 6
   noun

   A person's pubic hair, especially a woman's.

   As he ſtood on one ſide for a minute or ſo, unbuttoning his waſte-coat, and breeches, her fat brawny thighs hung down, and the whole greaſy landſkip lay fairly open to my view: a wide open-mouth'd gap, overſhaded with a grizzly buſh, ſeemed held out like a beggar's wallet for its'^([sic]) proviſion.

7. 7
   verb

   To branch thickly in the manner of a bush.

   Around it, and above, for ever green, / The bushing alders form'd a shady scene.

8. 8
   verb

   To set bushes for; to support with bushes.

   to bush peas

Etymology

From Middle English bush, from Old English *busċ, *bysċ (“copse, grove, scrub”, in placenames), from Proto-West Germanic *busk, from Proto-Germanic *buskaz (“bush, thicket”), probably from Proto-Indo-European *bʰuH- (“to grow”). Doublet of bosque. Cognates Cognate with Saterland Frisian Busk (“bush”), West Frisian bosk (“forest”), Dutch bos, bosch (“forest, wood”), German Busch (“bush, shrub; small forest, grove”), Luxembourgish Bësch (“forest, wood”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Nynorsk busk (“bush, shrub”), Icelandic buski (“bush, shrub”), Swedish buske (“bush, shrub”), Persian بی…