boscage

boscage

English

Alternative forms

• boskage

Etymology

From the Middle English boskage, from the Old French boscage, from Vulgar Latin *boscāticum, from Late Latin boscus, from Frankish *busk (compare Middle Dutch busch), from Proto-Germanic *buskaz (“forest, woods”).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /bɒskɪdʒ/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /bɑskɪd͡ʒ/

Noun

boscage (countable and uncountable, plural boscages)

1. A place set with trees or mass of shrubbery, a grove or thicket.
   • 1811, Ben Jonson, The Dramatic Works: Embellished with Portraits (volume 4, page 571)

     At the entrance of the king, the first traverse was drawn, and the lower descent of the mountain discovered, which was the pendant of a hill to life, with divers boscages and grovets upon the steep or hanging grounds thereof.

   • 1888, “T'Yeer-na-n-Oge”, in W. B. Yeats, editor, Irish Fairy and Folk Tales:

     The shadiest boskage covers it perpetually.

2. (law) Mast-nuts of forest trees, used as food for pigs, or any such sustenance as wood and trees yield to cattle.
3. (art) Among painters, a picture depicting a wooded scene.
4. A tax on wood.

Translations

a grove or thicket

Bulgarian: гъсталак (bg) m (gǎstalak) Russian: ро́ща (ru) f (róšča), подле́сок (ru) m (podlésok), куста́рник (ru) m (kustárnik)

See also

• bocage
• bosk
• bosky

References

1728, Cyclopaedia, a publication in the public domain.

Anagrams

• bocages

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Old French

Noun

boscage m (oblique plural boscages, nominative singular boscages, nominative plural boscage)

1. Alternative form of boschage