brushwood
(ˈbrʌʃwʊd)
[f. brush n.1]
1. Cut or broken twigs or branches; small wood.
| 1637 Bury Wills (1850) 169, I owe Danyell Whitacre..for three loades of brushe wood. 1783 Cowper Task iv. 381 Her scanty stock of brushwood, blazing clear. 1818 Hawthorne Amer. Note-bks. (1879) II. 44 A load of dry brushwood. |
| fig. a 1613 Overbury Newes Chimney Corn. Wks. (1856) 199 Wit is brushwood, judgement timber: the one gives the greatest flame, the other yeelds the durablest heat. 1649 G. Daniel Trinarch., Hen. V, ccxx, Lopt Royaltie, is ever to the Bold Attemptor, worth his pains; the Brush-wood's gold. 1682 Dryden Relig. Laici 269 Vain traditions stopped the gaping fence..What safety from such brushwood helps as these? |
2. Small growing trees and shrubs; thicket, underwood.
| 1732 Berkeley Alciphr. i. §2 Land that is suffered to lie waste..will be overspread with brush-wood, brambles, thorns. 1814 Scott Wav. xxxvi, Little dingles of stunted brushwood. 1835 W. Irving Tour Prairies 235 They all three made off..through thickets and brushwood. |
| attrib. 1855 Russell The War xxviii. 250 Brushwood glades and remote dells. |