Word.ws English Dictionary

beats the bushes

beats the bushes is the third-person singular simple present indicative 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 beats the bushes

What is beats the bushes the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Beats the bushes is the third-person singular simple present indicative of beat the bushes.

Words near beats the bushes in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: beats 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: “beats the bushes.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/beats_the_bushes. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.