- [countable] a plant that grows thickly with several hard stems coming up from the root
- a rose/holly bush
- in the bushes She was hiding in the bushes at the side of the lane.
Extra ExamplesTopics Plants and treesb2- a large clump of rose bushes
- to prune the rose bushes
Oxford Collocations Dictionaryadjective- rose
- thorn
- etc.
- …
- clump
- plant
- prune
- trim
- …
- grow
- among the bushes
- in the bushes
- bushes and trees
- trees and bushes
- [countable] a thing that looks like a bush, especially an area of thick hair or fur
- (often the bush)[uncountable] an area of wild land that has not been cleared, especially in Africa and Australia; in New Zealand an area where the forest has not been cleared
- Children are taught from an early age how to survive in the bush.
- They went out into the bush.
- hills that have become a wasteland after the removal of native bush
Oxford Collocations Dictionaryadjective- dense
- thick
- African
- …
- fire
- meat
- in the bush
- into the bush
Word OriginMiddle English: from Old French bos, bosc, variants of bois ‘wood’, reinforced by Old Norse buski, of Germanic origin and related to Dutch bos and German Busch. The sense ‘uncultivated country’ is probably directly from Dutch bos.
Idioms
See bush in the Oxford Advanced American Dictionarybeat about the bush (British English)
(North American English beat around the bush)
- to talk about something for a long time without coming to the main point
- Stop beating about the bush and tell me what you want.
a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush
- (saying) it is better to keep something that you already have than to risk losing it by trying to get much more
Check pronunciation:
bush