bosk
/bɑsk/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.04 in modern English
10
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A bush.
Example Sentences
- "Meantime, through well-known bosk and dell, / I'll lead where we may shelter well."
- "[...] and so by town and thorpe, / And tilth, and blowing bosks of wilderness, / We gain'd the mother-city thick with towers, / And in the imperial palace found the king."
- "The enclosure was indeed little beyond that of a good-sized paddock – its boundaries were visible on every side – but swelling uplands, covered with massy foliage sloped down to its wild irregular turf soil – soil poor for pasturage, but pleasant to the eye; with dell and dingle, bosks of fantastic pollards – dotted oaks of vast growth – here and there a weird hollow thorn-tree – patches of fern and gorse."
- "On February 16 a reconnaissance in force was pushed to within a mile of the fort and battle offered on the open plain. The challenge was disregarded, and only noticed by the sending out of a few well-mounted men to watch our movements. The forces of the enemy were kept well concealed in the bosque (grove) above the fort and within its walls."
- "Gensler also used box-trimmed ficus bosks in the executive dining area, where privacy is more important. "We made the spacing more generous between tables, grouped the tables in threes and fours, and set each group off with the bosks," [...]"
- "The area on the north side of the Mall that had been occupied for several decades by temporary structures was redesigned with a varied series of formal bosks evoking the character of baroque woodlands."
Etymology
From Middle English bosk, busk, variants of bush (“grove, wood; thicket, underbrush; bush; branch of a shrub or tree”), from Old English *busc (attested only in place names), likely from Anglo-Latin bosca (“firewood”), from Late Latin busca, buscus, boscus (“wood; woodland”), from Frankish and Proto-West Germanic *busk, from Proto-Germanic *buskaz (“bush, thicket”), probably from Proto-Indo-European *bʰuH- (“to become, grow, appear”). The English word is cognate with Dalmatian buasc (“forest; wood”), French bois (“wood (material); wood, woodland”), Italian bosco (“wood (wooded area)”), Sicilian voscu (“wood”), Middle Dutch bosch, busch (modern Dutch bos (“forest; wood”)), Norwegian busk (“bush, shrub”); Occitan boscs, Old High German busk (“bush”) (Middle High German busch, bosch, modern German Busch (“bush, shrub; brush, scrub”)), Portuguese bosque (“grove”), Spanish bosque (“forest”), West Frisian bosk (“forest”). Doublet of bush. Alternatively, the modern word may be a back-formation from bosky (“having abundant bushes, shrubs, or trees”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: *bʰuH-, bosk, *busc, bosca, busca, -
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /bɑsk/
- British English: /bɒsk/