hush

present singular third person hushes · participle present hushing · participle past hushed · past hushed

1. intransitiveTo become quiet.
2. transitiveTo make quiet.
3. transitiveTo appease; to allay; to soothe.

   And hush’d my deepest grief of all.

   1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], “Canto XIX”, in In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 32

   1 more example

   VVilt thou then / Huſh my Cares thus, and ſhelter me vvith Love?

   1682, Thomas Otway, Venice Preserv’d, or, A Plot Discover’d. A Tragedy. […], London: […] Jos[eph] Hindmarsh […], →OCLC, Act I, scene i, page 11

plural hushes

1. countableuncountableA silence, especially after some noise.

   It is the hush of night.

   1816, Lord Byron, “Canto III”, in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. Canto the Third, London: […] [F]or John Murray, […], →OCLC, stanza LXXXVI

   1 more example

   And there fell a hush upon the gods when they saw that Māna rested, and there was silence on Pegāna save for the drumming of Skarl.

   1905, Lord Dunsany [i.e., Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany], The Gods of Pegāna, London: [Charles] Elkin Mathews, […], →OCLC

present singular third person hushes · participle present hushing · participle past hushed · past hushed

1. Northern EnglandScotlandTo rush, to gush.

   On the fluir, bluid an punch now hush't leyke a stream, […]

   1840, Anderson, Ballads, page 96, quoted in the EDD

   1 more example

   […] water, far down below, roaring and hushing over the rocks, […]

   1867, David M. Moir, The Life of Mansie Wauch, Tailor in Dalkeith, page 97

2. intransitivetransitivebusinessTo send forth a rush of water over (some ground) so as to clear off the soil and other materials overlying, and thus uncover or separate out, ore.

   [He] had promised … that he would have a stop put to the hushing process.

   1887 October 28, North Star, quoted in the NED

   2 more examples

   […] worn its Chanel so deep in some Part of its Course as to work upon some mineral Substance, which gives it the Colour of Water hushed from Lead-mines, and is so strong as to tinge the River Derwent […]

   1750, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London (XLVI), page 364

   The earliest method of searching for lead ore was by collecting the water in dams and hushing the surface of the ground where metalliferous veins existed.

   1886, William Morley Egglestone, Weardale Names, page 73

plural hushes

1. businessWater which has been used to clear the soil off of some (area of) rock or ore.

   The great cause of the scarcity of fish in this river is without doubt the "hush" coming down from the lead mines in the upper waters. […]

   1879, Annual Report of the Inspectors of Salmon Fisheries (England and Wales), page 89

   1 more example

   […] the hush from the lead mines on the moors near that place enters the Arkle, and the stream below suffers materially, the fishing being of little good;

   1851, Tom Bradley, The Yorkshire Anglers' Guide to the Whole of the Fishing on ..., page 6

2. businessA part of a mine or quarry where ore is to be, or has been, excavated by an artificial flow of water.

   […] lead ore occurs abundantly in the upper crust of the earth, and this phrase would have been quite applicable to the early finds of shoad-stones of lead ore in Weardale, to the importance of which the scars of the "hushes" that still furrow the fell-sides bear conclusive evidence.

   1917, The Mining Magazine, volume 16, page 19

   1 more example

   After the first hush miners loosened the rock in the floor of the hush with picks and crow bars [...] a torrent of water was sent down which swept and tore the loosened stuff over the grate, trapping much of the ore that was being moved. In this method a hush could be used for over a century and could grow […]

   1965, Arthur Raistrick, A History of Lead Mining in the Pennines, page 159