William Shakespeare
Synonyms
Noun (1)
Adjective (2)
Examples of bush in a Sentence
Matt Hamilton, Los Angeles Times, 3 Apr. 2024
One agent looks to be tampering with a camera capturing the entrance, pointing it away from the grounds and into bushes.
—Mankaprr Conteh, Rolling Stone, 2 Apr. 2024
Below a forested hillside, tea pickers in colorful saris moved among rows of electric-green bushes, as if the scene were set to high contrast.
—Erin Vivid Riley, Travel + Leisure, 1 Apr. 2024
By Grace Marion | Bay City News Novato Police Department officers responded to a report of a teenager with a handgun hiding in a bush in front of Sinaloa Middle School on Friday, but upon investigation found the handgun was a Nerf gun.
—Bay City News Service, The Mercury News, 16 Mar. 2024
Frogs and toads work extremely well under bushes and in vegetation.
—Shaye Baker, Field & Stream, 6 Mar. 2024
Canines Wolves and other canine species have been known to chew down bushes and vegetation surrounding their dens, Ha says.
—Matt Benoit, Discover Magazine, 1 Mar. 2024
Install protective tree netting Cover trees, bushes and shrubs with netting with openings of a half-inch or less to block the cicadas from getting to plants.
—USA TODAY, 7 Mar. 2024
The park also has a 150-year-old wisteria tree and more than 5,000 azalea bushes that can be admired around the same time.
—Talia Avakian, Travel + Leisure, 2 Mar. 2024
Amy Schulman, PEOPLE.com, 10 July 2022
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'bush.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Word History
Noun (1)
Middle English bussh, bosch, buissh "woods, thicket, underbrush, shrub, underbrush concealing a hunter or fighter," later forms (probably assimilated to an Anglo-French variant of *buis, bois "woodland, wood [the material]" with a final hushing consonant) of boske, buske, going back to Old English *busc, going back to Germanic *buska- (perhaps also beside an earlier u-stem *busku-) (whence also Old Saxon -busc in brāmalbusk "bramble bush," Middle Dutch bosch, busch "forest, bunch, bundle," Old High German busc, bosc "shrub, bramble bush, thicket, grove," Old Swedish buske "bush," Old Norse [Norway] buskær, a nickname, probably "the bushy-haired one," Old Icelandic Buski, name for a dog, probably "the bristly one"), of uncertain origin; (sense 2) probably after Dutch bosch in this sense
Note: The Germanic pedigree of *buska- is relatively meager for the early periods. Old English *busc is perhaps evident in the place name Wardebusc, Veardebusc (modern Warboys in Huntingdonshire), attested in tenth-century charters, though Ekwall (Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names) took it as of Scandinavian origin. The Old High German forms are attested only in glosses from the twelfth century or later. An earlier opinion, propounded in Skeat and the Oxford English Dictionary, first edition, was that the Germanic words were borrowed from "Late Latin"; however, Latin boscus "wood, woodland"—the form buscus is less frequent—is not attested before the early eighth century. The genuine depth of Germanic attestation for *buska- and congeners was thoroughly explicated by Johannes Hubschmied in "Romanisch-germanische Wortprobleme I. Zur Geschichte von bois, bûche (mit Berücksichtigung der Ortsnamen)," Vox Romanica, Band 29 (1970), pp. 82-122, 283-302. There now seems little question that the etymon is Germanic, and that corresponding Romance words are borrowed from Germanic. Note that beside *busk- a form *bosk- is evident in Middle English and elsewhere, especially Romance. Hubschmied explains *busk- as an outcome in an original u-stem, with *bosk- resulting from lowering before a non-high vowel in the next syllable; alternatively, the -u- could simply result from failure of lowering. Also widespread in Middle English, especially east midland and northern, and in early Scots, are forms without palatalized sk, as bosk(e), buske (compare bosky), which have been attributed both to Old Norse and to Anglo-French bosc. See also boiserie, boscage, bosquet and bouquet, and compare ambush entry 1.
Verb
derivative of bush entry 1
Adjective (1)
from attributive use of bush entry 1
Noun (2)
Dutch bus bushing, box, from Middle Dutch busse box, from Late Latin buxis — more at box entry 1
Adjective (2)
short for bush-league
Noun (1)
14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1a
Verb
15th century, in the meaning defined at transitive sense
Adjective (1)
1595, in the meaning defined at sense 1
Noun (2)
1566, in the meaning defined above
Adjective (2)
1959, in the meaning defined above
Phrases Containing bush
Dictionary Entries Near bush
Cite this Entry
“Bush.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bush. Accessed 16 Apr. 2024.
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Kids Definition
bush
noun
Biographical Definition
Bush 1 of 3
biographical name (1)
Bush
2 of 3biographical name (2)
Bush
3 of 3biographical name (3)
1890–1974 American electrical engineer
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Britannica.com: Encyclopedia article about bush
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