Word of the Day : July 9, 2017

bosky \BAH-skee\ adjective

Definition

1 : having abundant trees or shrubs

2 : of or relating to a woods

Examples

The deer sensed our presence and fled to the bosky areas surrounding the meadow.

"A national park since 1993, it's a tranquil region patched with pine forest, where beavers swim in lazy streams and mushrooms proliferate along bosky walking trails." — Henry Wismayer, The New York Times, 20 Nov. 2016

Did You Know?

Bosk, busk, bush—in Middle English these were all variant spellings of a word meaning "shrub." Although bush and busk survived into modern English (busk only barely; its use is limited to occurrences in some dialects of northern Britain), bosk disappeared from the written language for a while. It wasn't gone entirely, though: in the early 17th century it provided the root for the woodsy adjective bosky. Since its formation, bosky has been firmly rooted in our language, and its widespread popularity seems to have resurrected its parental form. By the early 19th century, bosk (also spelled bosque) had reappeared in writing, but this time with the meaning "a small wooded area."

Aired July 9, 2017

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