Word.ws English Dictionary

beaten the bushes

beaten the bushes is the past participle of beat the bushes.

Meaning of beat the bushes

Verb

beat the bushes (third-person singular simple present beats the bushes, present participle beating the bushes, simple past beat the bushes, past participle beaten the bushes or (colloquial) beat the bushes)

  1. (Canada, US, idiomatic) Synonym of pound the pavement (“to campaign diligently; to seek something”).
    • They started beating the bushes in search of a commercially available solvent that would aid their manufacturing but wouldn't be too horribly toxic and wouldn't cost an arm and a leg.

Questions about beaten the bushes

What is beaten the bushes the past participle of?
Beaten the bushes is the past participle of beat the bushes.

Words near beaten the bushes in the dictionary

  1. beaten someone's time
  2. beaten the air
  3. beaten the bat
  4. beaten the bishop
  5. beaten the bounds
  6. beaten the bushes
  7. beaten the clock
  8. beaten the cock
  9. beaten the crowd
  10. beaten the daylights out of
  11. beaten the drum

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: beaten the bushes (page history and authors); beat the bushes (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “beaten the bushes.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/beaten_the_bushes. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.