Word.ws English Dictionary

bud

/bʌd/

bud noun: a newly sprouted leaf or blossom that has not yet unfolded.

bud: a newly sprouted leaf or blossom that has not yet unfolded
Image: Subhrajyoti07, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

bud (countable and uncountable, plural buds)

  1. A newly sprouted leaf or blossom that has not yet unfolded.
    • After a long, cold winter, the trees finally began to produce buds.
    • Among Turks, pills consisting of hemp buds, muscat nuts, saffron, and honey were a popular aphrodisiac.1961, Harry E. Wedeck, Dictionary of Aphrodisiacs, New York: The Citadel Press, page 113
    Synonyms:
    budset
  2. (figuratively) Something that has begun to develop.
    • breast buds
  3. A small rounded body in the process of splitting from an organism, which may grow into a genetically identical new organism.
    • In this slide, you can see a yeast cell forming buds.
  4. (Australia, Canada, US, plural-normally, slang, usually) Cannabis that has been taken from the flowering part of the plant intended to be smoked.
    • You got any buds?
  5. (Australia, Canada, US, slang, uncountable, usually) Marijuana.
    • Hey bro, want to smoke some bud?
  6. A weaned calf in its first year, so called because the horns are then beginning to bud.
  7. (dated, term of endearment) A pretty young girl.
    • My pretty bud was unfolding and I was not there to see it. She was developing so rapidly, I felt I could not be from her a day without missing some sweetness that could never come again.1874, Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, a Popular Journal of General Literature

Verb

bud (third-person singular simple present buds, present participle budding, simple past and past participle budded)

  1. (intransitive) To form buds.
    • The trees are finally starting to bud.
    • And it came to pass, that on the morrow Moses went into the tabernacle of witness; and, behold, the rod of Aaron for the house of Levi was budded, and brought forth buds, and bloomed blossoms, and yielded almonds.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Numbers 17:8
  2. (intransitive) To reproduce by splitting off buds.
    • Yeast reproduces by budding.
  3. (intransitive) To begin to grow, or to issue from a stock in the manner of a bud, as a horn.
    • Seeds of dissent were budding among the recruits.
  4. (intransitive) To be like a bud in respect to youth and freshness, or growth and promise.
    • Young budding virgin, fair and fresh and sweet, / Whither away, or where is thy abode?c. 1590–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Taming of the Shrew”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
  5. (transitive) To put forth as a bud.
    • What appeared the same to us really wasn't. Every day was different, if we looked closely enough. Like the topiary tree that finally budded a rose after Terrence died: […]2013, Julie Brown, The Brownstone, page 263
    • Once, he was put on a course of potent hormone pills, coming off them when he woke up one morning to discover he was budding breasts2020 September 1, Tom Lamont, “The butcher's shop that lasted 300 years (give or take)”, in The Guardian
  6. (transitive) To graft by inserting a bud under the bark of another tree.

Noun (2)

bud (plural buds)

  1. (Canada, US, informal) Buddy, friend.
    • I like to hang out with my buds on Saturday night.
    • Anna's best bud, John (Malcolm Cumming), harbors a secret crush on her, which is indicative of the lazier, more derivative portions of the story that simply repeat tropes rather than comment on them.2018 November 27, April Wolfe, “Anna And The Apocalypse is a Holiday-horror Cocktail of Singing, Maiming, and Clichés”, in The A.V. Club, archived from the original on 04 Nov 2019
  2. (Canada, informal) Synonym of guy, term of address for a man or person.
    • [T]hen he shrugged his shoulders and said, with admirable philosophy: "Well, that's life, ain't it, bud?"1946, George Johnston, Skyscrapers in the Mist, page 87
    Synonyms:
    guy, term of address for a man or person
  3. (informal, rare) Brother.
    • So I'm walking along, minding my own business, right, and suddenly I found myself trapped in a nuclear family. Oh, they were all around me, mom, dad, bud, sis.1992, Lea DeLaria, “P-Town”, in Bulldyke in a China Shop (spoken-word comedy album)

Noun (3) capitalized: BUD

BUD (countable and uncountable, plural BUDs)

  1. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of benzodiazepine use disorder.
  2. (abbreviation, informal, initialism) Initialism of big ugly dish.
    • I spend substantially less time fiddling with the 4dtv than I did with my HTS Premier 70, to say the least. As far as quality goes, it puts the SLD to shame. With the BUD my 53" picture is outstanding. With DTV/USSB it looked like crap.1998 March 1, Guy R Tann, “Re: IPG ON 4DTV”, in alt.video.satellite.4dtv (Usenet)

Proper noun (1) capitalized: BUD

BUD

  1. AB InBev
    • Shares of AB InBev (BUD) soared nearly 6% after the Budweiser, Bud Light and Stella Artois owner reported solid sales and earnings.2019 July 25, Paul R. La Monica, “Good news for the king of beer: People are drinking more”, in CNN Business

Proper noun (2) capitalized: Bud

Bud

  1. A male nickname.
    • I remember many visits from my uncle Bud.
  2. (Southern US, rare) A male given name from English.

Proper noun (3) capitalized: Bud

Bud (plural Buds)

  1. (informal) A Budweiser beer.
    • I'd like a Bud, please.

bud meaning in Hindi, Marathi, Bengali and Telugu

bud in Hindi

newly formed leaf or flower that has not yet unfolded
कली kalī, कोपल kopal, मुकुल mukul

bud in Marathi

newly formed leaf or flower that has not yet unfolded
कळी kaḷī

bud in Bengali

newly formed leaf or flower that has not yet unfolded
কলি koli

bud in Telugu

newly formed leaf or flower that has not yet unfolded
మొగ్గ mogga, కలిక kalika
More languagesFewer languages
bud in Kannada
ಬುಡ್
bud in Punjabi
ਡੋਡੀ ḍoḍī, ਕਲੀ kalī
bud in Gujarati
કળી kaḷī
bud in Assamese
কলি koli
bud in Nepali
कोपिला kopilā
bud in Tagalog
buko, mamuko
bud in Arabic
بُرْعُم burʕum
bud in Malay
tunas, putik
bud in Persian
غنچه ġonče, نوگل nowgol, بوژنه bužne, حشیش hašiš
bud in Thai
ตา dtaa, หน่อ nɔ̀ɔ, ผลิ plì, แตกหน่อ dtɛ̀ɛk-nɔ̀ɔ
bud in Vietnamese
búp, chồi

Examples of bud in a sentence

  • Leaf buds grew on the trees with the advance of spring.
  • My first time toking up was out of a plastic water bottle with bud lodged in the cap.
  • The leaf buds of the plane tree are subpetiolar.

All 40 example sentences with bud

Synonyms of bud

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of bud

Forms of bud

Noun
pluralbuds
pluralBUDs
Verb
third-person singular presentbuds
present participlebudding
past participlebudded
pastbudded
Proper noun
pluralBuds

Plural of bud: buds

Origin of bud

From Middle English budde, bodde (“bud, seed pod”), from Old English *budde, from Proto-West Germanic *buʀdā, from Proto-Germanic *buzdǭ (compare archaic German Butte (“rosehip”), Swedish dialect bodd (“head”)), perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *bʰew-, *bu- (“to swell”). Compare also German Low German Butte, Butt (“bud”), Dutch bot (“bud”), regional German Butz, Butzen (“seed pod; apple core”), German Low German Haagbutt ("rosehip"; Haagbudden (“rosehips”, plural)).

Back-formation from buddy.

Abbreviation of Budweiser.

Words formed from bud

Phrases with bud

Words that rhyme with bud

15 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about bud

What does bud mean?
Bud means a newly sprouted leaf or blossom that has not yet unfolded.
What is bud in Hindi?
Bud in Hindi is कली (kalī), कोपल (kopal), मुकुल (mukul). See Bud meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is bud?
Bud can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce bud?
Bud is pronounced /bʌd/.
What is the plural of bud?
The plural of bud is buds.

Words near bud in the dictionary

  1. Buczkowski
  2. Buczkowskis
  3. Buczynski
  4. Buczynskis
  5. Bucșani
  6. bud
  7. bud borer
  8. bud borers
  9. bud grafting
  10. bud graftings
  11. bud moth

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bud (page history and authors); BUD (page history and authors); Bud (page history and authors); bud (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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-us-bud.ogg.

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