bush

Meaning

1. 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.
2. A shrub cut off, or a shrublike branch of a tree.
3. 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.
4. (slang) A person's pubic hair, especially a woman's.
5. The tail, or brush, of a fox.

small tree

grassy place

the bush

crotch hair

wooded area

forest land

small brush

the wild

physical body

clump of bushes

shade tree

arbuscle

fourre

wild plant

frutex

fallow field

dwarf tree

virgin land

juniper bush

old growth

bearing insert

uninhabited area

liner bushing

tropical scrub

dwarf thicket

bearing bush

bearing shell

cultivated plant

mine run

Frequency

Pronounced as (IPA)

/bʊʃ/

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”). Cognate with West Frisian bosk (“forest”), Dutch bos (“forest”), German Busch (“bush”), Danish and Norwegian busk (“bush, shrub”), Swedish buske (“bush, shrub”), Persian بیشه (bêša/biše, “woods”). Latin and Romance forms (Latin boscus, Occitan bòsc, French bois, bûche and buisson, Italian bosco and boscaglia, Spanish bosque, Portuguese bosque) derive from the Germanic. The sense 'pubic hair' was first attested in 1745.