Bosk, Brush, Bush, Carr, Coppice, Copse: Origins, Forms, Histories of Words Meaning Wooded Area

The natural features of a region are its topography (Greek topos, "place"). One of the most important examples is wooded areas.

Woods of various kinds and sizes, along with related natural and human-made features, go by many different names. In the current alphabetic series of such terms, here are the origins, forms, and histories of bosk, brush, bush, carr, coppice, and copse.

Bosk
Bosk has an unusual history. It is actually two different, though related, words.

(1) During the 13th and 14th centuries, boske was a variant of busk ("bush"). The word was not recorded from the late 14th century to the 19th century, but it was preserved in British dialect. Since then it has reemerged in print as bosk, still dialectal for a bush.

(2) Despite the loss of bosk in literary circles, its adjective form bosky ("having abundant shrubs or trees, pertaining to a woods") has appeared regularly in print since the 16th century. The modern literary bosk (1814), meaning a small wooded area, probably evolved as a back-formation of the adjective bosky.

Brush
The Modern English topographic word brush (16th century) comes from Middle English brusch (14th century), from Middle French broce. The word may be of Celtic origin, akin to Old Irish froech ("heather").

Brush is the wood of small branches, especially when cut or broken (14th century). The word also denotes the small growing trees or shrubs of a wooded area (15th century).

Brushwood has the same two senses: the wood of small branches, especially when cut or broken (17th century); and a thicket of shrubs and small trees (18th century).

Bush
Modern English bush comes from Middle English bush (15th century) and busk (13th century). The word is akin to Old High German busc ("forest").

A bush is a shrub, especially a low, densely bunched shrub (13th century); a close thicket of shrubs (16th century); and a forested or shrub-covered area that is often contrasted with towns and is sometimes called the bush (18th century).

Carr
Carr is a British dialectal word that has appeared in several different forms, such as carre (16th century), ker (15th century), and kerr (14th century). The word is probably of Scandinavian origin, akin to Old Norse kjarr ("underbrush").

In British dialect a carr is a low land covered wholly or partly by water (14th century), and a similar bog on which there is an alder grove (15th century).

Coppice
Modern English coppice (17th century) comes from earlier spellings of the word, such as copeys (16th century), from Middle French copeiz, from couper ("to cut").

A coppice is a thicket, grove, or growth of small trees that are grown for the purpose of obtaining periodic cuttings (16th century). The word also denotes a forest originating mainly from shoots or root suckers rather than seed.

Copse, an altered form of coppice, refers especially to a thicket, grove, or growth of small trees (16th century).
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Encyclopaedia Britannica Ready Reference 2004. CD-ROM. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2004.

Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. 11th ed. Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 2006.

Merriam-Webster's Geographical Dictionary. 3rd ed. Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 2007.

The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1989.