bush out

present singular third person bushes out · participle present bushing out · participle past bushed out · past bushed out

1. intransitiveTo be bushy; to protrude in a thick tuft.

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

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

   2 more examples

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

   1898, Mabel Osgood Wright, chapter 17, in Four-Footed Americans and Their Kin, New York: Macmillan, page 242

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

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

2. intransitiveTo 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.

   3 more examples

   [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,

   1592, Francesco Colonna, translated by Robert Dallington, The Strife of Loue in a Dreame, London: Simon Waterson

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

   1611, George Turberville, The Booke of Falconrie or Hawking, London: Thomas Purfoot, page 369

   1625, Samuel Purchas, Purchas His Pilgrimes, Part 4, “Voyages To and About the Southerne America,” Chapter 13, p. 1481, [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. transitiveTo cause (something) to protrude in a thick tuft.

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

   2 more examples

   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.

   1686, Richard Blome, The Gentlemans Recreation, London, Part 4, Chapter 5, p. 127

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

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