Word.ws English Dictionary

beating the bushes

beating the bushes is the present participle and gerund 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 beating the bushes

What is beating the bushes the present participle and gerund of?
Beating the bushes is the present participle and gerund of beat the bushes.

Words near beating the bushes in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: beating 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.

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