bush: [13] Bush comes ultimately from a prehistoric Germanic *busk-, which also produced German busch ‘bush’. There is no actual record of the word in Old English, but it probably existed as *bysc. The Germanic base was also borrowed into the Romance languages, where in French it eventually produced bois ‘wood’. A diminutive form of this gave English bouquet [18], while a variant bosc may have been at least partly responsible for the now archaic English bosky ‘wooded’ [16]. A derived Vulgar Latin verb *imboscāre gave English ambush. => ambush, bouquet, oboe
bush (n.)
"many-stemmed woody plant," Old English bysc, from West Germanic *busk "bush, thicket" (cognates: Old Saxon and Old High German busc, Dutch bosch, bos, German Busch). Influenced by or combined with cognate words from Scandinavian (such as Old Norse buskr, Danish busk, but this might be from West Germanic) and Old French (busche "firewood," apparently of Frankish origin), and also perhaps Anglo-Latin bosca "firewood," from Medieval Latin busca (whence Italian bosco, Spanish bosque, French bois), which apparently also was borrowed from West Germanic; compare Boise.
In British American colonies, applied from 1650s to the uncleared districts, hence "country," as opposed to town (1780); probably originally from Dutch bosch in the same sense, because it seems to appear first in English in former Dutch colonies. Meaning "pubic hair" (especially of a woman) is from 1745. To beat the bushes (mid-15c.) is a way to rouse birds so that they fly into the net which others are holding, which originally was the same thing as beating around the bush (see beat (v.)).
双语例句
1. They walked through the dense Mozambican bush for thirty six hours.
他们花了36个小时穿过茂密的莫桑比克丛林。
来自柯林斯例句
2. George W. Bush carried the state with 56 percent of the vote.
乔治·W.布什在该州以56%的得票率获胜。
来自柯林斯例句
3. He raced ahead up into the bush, barking and snarling.
它嗥叫着冲向前，一头钻进了灌木丛。
来自柯林斯例句
4. You have to prune a bush if you want fruit.
如果想让灌木结果，就必须进行修剪。
来自柯林斯例句
5. The Bush Foundation has funded a variety of faculty development programs.
