Word.ws English Dictionary

cancer bush

cancer bush noun: a legume native to Southern Africa that grows red flowers and bloated pods, often used in folk medicine; Lessertia frutescens (formerly Sutherlandia frutescens).

cancer bush: a legume native to Southern Africa that grows red flowers and bloated pods, often used in folk...
Image: Uwe und Lukas, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

cancer bush (plural cancer bushes)

  1. A legume native to Southern Africa that grows red flowers and bloated pods, often used in folk medicine; Lessertia frutescens (formerly Sutherlandia frutescens).
    Synonyms:
    balloon pea, sutherlandia

Synonyms of cancer bush

  • balloon pea
  • sutherlandia

Forms of cancer bush

pluralcancer bushes
alternative formcancer-bush

Origin of cancer bush

From cancer (“disease”) + bush, probably a calque of Afrikaans kankerbos. Named after one of its uses in folk medicine.

Questions about cancer bush

What does cancer bush mean?
Cancer bush means a legume native to Southern Africa that grows red flowers and bloated pods, often used in folk medicine; Lessertia frutescens (formerly Sutherlandia frutescens).
What part of speech is cancer bush?
Cancer bush is a noun.
What is the plural of cancer bush?
The plural of cancer bush is cancer bushes.

Words near cancer bush in the dictionary

  1. cancels out
  2. cancels someone's Christmas
  3. Cancemini
  4. Canceo
  5. cancer
  6. cancer bush
  7. cancer bushes
  8. cancer cell
  9. cancer cells
  10. cancer root
  11. cancer roots

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cancer bush (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: “cancer bush.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cancer_bush. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.