Word.ws English Dictionary

pushbike

Syllables: push·bikeUK/ˈpʊʃbaɪk//ˈpʊʃˌbaɪk/

pushbike noun: a pedal bicycle, as distinguished from a motorized bicycle.

pushbike: a pedal bicycle, as distinguished from a motorized bicycle
Image: Ance P. (Ance Pudane), CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

pushbike (plural pushbikes)

  1. (Commonwealth, Ireland, UK, informal) A pedal bicycle, as distinguished from a motorized bicycle.
    • In England I learned to ride what the Australians call a push-bike, and spent many week-end leaves, and one four days' leave, riding in the South of England and Wales. [...] Today, I wished the push-bike was in its old place—especially when three boys sailed past on push-bikes and offered to give...1919, The Motorcycle Illustrated, volume 15, New York, N.Y.: Motorcycle Publishing Company, →OCLC, page 15
    • [W]e find that the police have only got a pushbike in the place of the horse. We are, therefore, retrogressing. A pushbike cannot be used very well on our roads, and it is practically useless. The hon. member for Prieska expressed the view that it would cost much more to provide motor vehicles in...1937, Union of South Africa: Debates of House of Assembly (House of Assembly of South Africa), volume 30, Cape Town: Cape Times, →OCLC, column 5911

Verb

pushbike (third-person singular simple present pushbikes, present participle pushbiking, simple past and past participle pushbiked)

  1. (Australia, New Zealand, UK, informal, intransitive) To travel by pushbike.
    • It makes me miserable when I think of the number of poor surveyors still push-biking their daily round.1913, Surveyor, volume 43, London: [Taylor & Francis?], →OCLC, page 1001, column 2
    • Recently two of us had to go into Makeni to collect copper for the men's December pay, and as walking would have taken at least two days, and for any degree of comfort four, we push biked along the bush track from camp to Kamabai, about six miles, and covered the remaining twenty odd miles by...1930s, “Homo” [pseudonym; Harold James Holmes], Behind Mount Lion: Treks and Tours in Sierra Leone: Compiled from the Letters of “Homo”, Andover, Hampshire: Published at the “Advertiser” Printing...

Examples of pushbike in a sentence

  • [W]e find that the police have only got a pushbike in the place of the horse.1937, Union of South Africa: Debates of House of Assembly (House of Assembly of South Africa), volume 30, Cape Town: Cape Times, →OCLC...
  • I ask the Minister for Transport whether his attention has been drawn to the fact that last year 120 pushbike riders were killed and more than 4,000 injured?1970, Clarence Joseph Earl, “Bicycles”, in New South Wales Parliamentary Debates (New South Wales Legislative Assembly), Sydney, N.S.W.: W....
  • It was just like an old novel: an ornate iron gate was opened by a liveried janitor, looking askance at my rather derelict pushbike.1984, Tad Sobolewski, Crossing the Bridges, Adelaide, S.A.: Dezsery Ethnic Publications, →ISBN, page 3:
  • The town being so small, everybody rode pushbikes and there were pushbikes propped up everywhere.1996, Australian Farm Journal, volume 6, Melbourne, Vic.: Rural Press Limited, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 12, column 2:

Synonyms of pushbike

Forms of pushbike

Noun
pluralpushbikes
alternative formpush bike
alternative formpush-bike
Verb
third-person singular presentpushbikes
present participlepushbiking
past participlepushbiked
pastpushbiked

Origin of pushbike

The noun is derived from push + bike. The verb is derived from the noun.

Words formed from pushbike

Questions about pushbike

What does pushbike mean?
Pushbike means a pedal bicycle, as distinguished from a motorized bicycle.
How do you use pushbike in a sentence?
[W]e find that the police have only got a pushbike in the place of the horse.
What part of speech is pushbike?
Pushbike can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce pushbike?
Pushbike is pronounced /ˈpʊʃbaɪk/ (UK).
What is the plural of pushbike?
The plural of pushbike is pushbikes.

Words near pushbike in the dictionary

  1. pushbacks
  2. pushball
  3. pushballs
  4. pushbar
  5. pushbars
  6. pushbike
  7. pushbiked
  8. pushbikes
  9. pushbiking
  10. pushblock
  11. pushblocks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pushbike (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-us-pushbike.mp3, En-au-pushbike.oga.

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