Word.ws English Dictionary

bosk

/bɒsk/US/bɑsk/

bosk noun: a bush.

bosk: a bush
Image: Nicholas A. Tonelli from Northeast Pennsylvania, USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

bosk (plural bosks)

  1. (obsolete except dialectal) A bush.
  2. (archaic) A thicket; a small wood.
    • Meantime, through well-known bosk and dell, / I'll lead where we may shelter well.1815, Walter Scott, “Canto Fifth”, in The Lord of the Isles, a Poem, Edinburgh: […] [F]or Archibald Constable and Co. […]; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown; by James Ballantyne and Co....
    • [...] and so by town and thorpe, / And tilth, and blowing bosks of wilderness, / We gain'd the mother-city thick with towers, / And in the imperial palace found the king.1847, Alfred Tennyson, “Part I”, in The Princess: A Medley, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 17
    Synonyms:
    copse, grove

bosk meaning in Tamil

bosk in Tamil

புதர்க்காடு

Synonyms of bosk

Forms of bosk

pluralbosks
alternative formbosque

Origin of bosk

From Middle English bosk, busk, variants of bush (“grove, wood; thicket, underbrush; bush; branch of a shrub or tree”), from Old English *busc (attested only in place names), likely from Anglo-Latin bosca (“firewood”), from Late Latin busca, buscus, boscus (“wood; woodland”), from Frankish and Proto-West Germanic *busk, from Proto-Germanic *buskaz (“bush, thicket”), probably from Proto-Indo-European *bʰuH- (“to become, grow, appear”). The English word is cognate with Dalmatian buasc (“forest; wood”), French bois (“wood (material); wood, woodland”), Italian bosco (“wood (wooded area)”), Sicilian voscu (“wood”), Middle Dutch bosch, busch (modern Dutch bos (“forest; wood”)), Norwegian busk (“bush, shrub”); Occitan boscs, Old High German busk (“bush”) (Middle High German busch, bosch, modern German Busch (“bush, shrub; brush, scrub”)), Portuguese bosque (“grove”), Spanish bosque (“forest”), West Frisian bosk (“forest”). Doublet of bush. Alternatively, the modern word may be a back-formation from bosky (“having abundant bushes, shrubs, or trees”).

Words formed from bosk

Words that rhyme with bosk

Questions about bosk

What does bosk mean?
Bosk means a bush.
What is bosk in Tamil?
Bosk in Tamil is புதர்க்காடு. See Bosk meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is bosk?
Bosk is a noun.
How do you pronounce bosk?
Bosk is pronounced /bɒsk/ (UK).
What is the plural of bosk?
The plural of bosk is bosks.

Words near bosk in the dictionary

  1. bosintang
  2. bosjemanite
  3. Bosjesman
  4. Bosjesmans
  5. Bosjesmen
  6. bosk
  7. boska
  8. boskage
  9. boskages
  10. bosker
  11. boskers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bosk (page history and authors); bosk (Tamil Wiktionary) (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-uk-bosk.oga.

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