bugle

plural bugles

1. A horn used by hunters.
2. entertainmentA simple brass instrument consisting of a horn with no valves, playing only pitches in its harmonic series
3. The sound of something that bugles.

   the bugle of an elk

4. A sort of wild ox; a buffalo.

   a hunting horn, origin. made of the horn of a "bugle" or wild ox

   1992, William Shakespeare, Holger Klein, Much Ado about Nothing: A New Critical Edition, page 145

   3 more examples

   Then tooke that squire an horne of bugle small, Which hong adowne his side in twisted gold And tassels gay.

   1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faery Queene, page 88

   The tongue so rough, that were it licks, it fetches blood. The Greeks used not these, nor Bugles in Physick, not having tried their vertue; though Indian-woods are full of such, yet parts of them are of more efficacy in medicine, (it is thought) than any part of ordinary Oxen.

   1678, Joannes Jonstonus (M.D., Polonus.), A Description of the Nature of Four-Footed Beasts, page 31

   All in the merry strand, With the ran, ran tan, And the tippy, tippy tran, And away with the royal bow! wow! wow! And the riddle diddle do, And the bugle's horn, For into the woods we'll run, brave boys, And into the woods we'll run.

   1928, Lora Sarah La Mance, The House of Waltman and Its Allied Families, page 17

present singular third person bugles · participle present bugling · participle past bugled · past bugled

1. To announce, sing, or cry in the manner of a musical bugle.

   “It was as though the very constellations knew our impending sorrow,” he bugled, his head raised to the ceiling, his voice full-throated.

   1952, Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man, Penguin Books (2014), page 128

   Synonyms: trumpet

plural bugles

1. fashionA tubular glass or plastic bead sewn onto clothes as a decorative trim.

   Billionaires wear hoodies and sneakers, not taffeta and bugle beads.

   2026 January 20, Vanessa Friedman, “The Way ‘Rich’ Once Looked”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC

   2 more examples

   How well so ever I fancied my lectures against pride had conquered the vanity of my daughters; yet I still found them secretly attached to all their former finery: they still loved laces, ribbands, bugles and catgut […]

   1766, [Oliver Goldsmith], chapter 4, in The Vicar of Wakefield: […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), Salisbury, Wiltshire: […] B. Collins, for F[rancis] Newbery, […], →OCLC

   With the exception of a woman in a black silk dress with bugles who, incredible as it may seem, had ordered cocoa and sparkling limado simultaneously and was washing down a meal of Cambridge sausages and pastry with alternate draughts of both liquids, the place was empty.

   1925, P. G. Wodehouse, chapter 20, in Sam the Sudden

comparative more bugle · superlative most bugle

1. obsoletejet-black

   Bugle eyeballs.

   c. 1598–1600 (date written), William Shakespeare, “As You Like It”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene v]

plural bugles

1. A plant in the family Lamiaceae grown as a ground cover Ajuga reptans, and other plants in the genus Ajuga.

   Synonyms: bugleweed, carpet bugle, ground pine, common bugle

1. A village in Treverbyn parish, Cornwall, England (OS grid ref SX0158).