bush out

English

Verb

bush out (third-person singular simple present bushes out, present participle bushing out, simple past and past participle bushed out)

1. (intransitive) To be bushy; to protrude in a thick tuft.
   • 1898, Mabel Osgood Wright, chapter 17, in Four-Footed Americans and Their Kin‎^[1], New York: Macmillan, page 242:

     [The Grizzly] has a heavy head, a rather wolflike face, with full cheek tufts of fur bushing out well up to the ears,

   • 1913, D. H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers‎^[2], London: Duckworth, Part 2, Chapter 7, p. 169:

     Round the broken top of the tower the ivy bushed out, old and handsome.

   • 1918, Willa Cather, My Ántonia‎^[3], Boston: Houghton Mifflin, Book 1, Chapter 3, p. 27:

     […] his thick, iron-gray hair was brushed straight back from his forehead. It was so long that it bushed out behind his ears […]

2. (intransitive) To become bushy; to grow into the form of a thick tuft.

   Removing the shoots on the side of the plant will encourage it to grow upward instead of bushing out.

   • 1592, Francesco Colonna, translated by Robert Dallington, The Strife of Loue in a Dreame‎^[4], London: Simon Waterson:

     [The walls] were all couered ouer with a crusting of Pearle, close ioyned and set together: and towardes the toppe, there sprouted out greene yuie, the leaues thickning and bushing out from the Pearles,

   • 1611, George Turberville, The Booke of Falconrie or Hawking‎^[5], London: Thomas Purfoot, page 369:

     […] the Dog becomes more beautifull by cutting the toppe of his sterne: for then will it bush out very gallantly,

   • 1625, Samuel Purchas, Purchas His Pilgrimes, Part 4, “Voyages To and About the Southerne America,” Chapter 13, p. 1481,^[6]

     [They] deformed their children with laying one boord on the fore-head, and another in the necke […] to make them broad-faced, shauing away the haire of the crowne and necke, and letting it growe on the sides, making it curle and bush out to more monstrositie.

3. (transitive) To cause (something) to protrude in a thick tuft.
   • 1686, Richard Blome, The Gentlemans Recreation‎^[7], London, Part 4, Chapter 5, p. 127:

     The Stalking-Hedge should be two or three Yards long, and about a Yard and an half high, and made in small Wands, and bushed out in the manner of a true Hedge, with certain Supports or Stakes, to bear it up from falling whilst you take your aim to Shoot. And this is to be carried before you for your Shelter from the Fowl.

   • 1763, George Colman, Terrae-Filius, Number 3, 7 July, 1763, in Prose on Several Occasions, London: T. Cadel, 1787, p. 249,^[8]

     Mr. FOLIO […] waited in his gold laced hat with a handkerchief of Mrs. FOLIO’s about his ears, till the return of his wig, properly bushed out and powdered,

   • 1963, Fritz Leiber, “No Great Magic”, in Galaxy Science Fiction, volume 22, number 2, page 162:

     […] he furiously bushed out and clipped cross-wise sections of beard and slapped them on his chin gleaming brown with spirit gum.