Word.ws English Dictionary

bushwhacker

bushwhacker noun: one who travels through the woods, off the designated path.

bushwhacker: one who travels through the woods, off the designated path
Image: Red River Historical Museum, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

bushwhacker (plural bushwhackers)

  1. (US) One who travels through the woods, off the designated path.
  2. (Australia) A person who lives in the bush, especially as a fugitive; a person who clears woods and bush country.
  3. (US, historical) A guerrilla (of either side) during the American Civil War.
    • The bushwhackers remained at General Cooper′s camp several days, then crossed the Red River into Texas.1962, Albert E. Castel, William Clarke Quantrill: His Life and Times, page 155
    • She stared at us. “Hardly. You must be from far off, not to know about Quantrill′s raids. Last March the bushwhackers rode into Aubrey, shot every man in town, stole everything, burned down houses. […] ”1967 April, Donald Keith, The Time Machine Hunts a Treasure, Boys' Life, page 51
  4. (dated) Someone who attacks without warning.
  5. A small, soft-floored inflatable boat (designed for use by one or two people).
    • We spent the rest of the day hopping from pond to pond with the bushwhackers, and we found them very suited for it.1977 September, Dave Hurteau, Air and Water, Field & Stream, page 90

Forms of bushwhacker

pluralbushwhackers
alternative formbushwacker

Origin of bushwhacker

From bush + whacker.

Questions about bushwhacker

What does bushwhacker mean?
Bushwhacker means one who travels through the woods, off the designated path.
What part of speech is bushwhacker?
Bushwhacker is a noun.
What is the plural of bushwhacker?
The plural of bushwhacker is bushwhackers.

Words near bushwhacker in the dictionary

  1. Bushway
  2. Bushways
  3. bushweed
  4. bushwhack
  5. bushwhacked
  6. bushwhacker
  7. bushwhackers
  8. bushwhacking
  9. bushwhackings
  10. bushwhacks
  11. Bushwick

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bushwhacker (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-AU ck1 bushwhacker.ogg.

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