bush
/bʊʃ/
"bush" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“bush” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #3,043 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #3,043
- frequency rank, English
- 4
- letters
- 6
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A woody plant distinguished from a tree by its multiple stems and lower height, being usually less than six metres tall; a horticultural rather than strictly botanical category.
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | bush |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /bʊʃ/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #3,043 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “bush” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for bush is 4 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /bʊʃ/. Corpus data places it at rank #3,043 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 5 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 6 likely wrong-spelling variants for bush, with forms such as "bbush", "bsuh", and "buhs". Every one of these variants traces to a single-character edit -- an added or dropped letter, a swapped consonant, or a vowel swap -- the kind of slip a spell-checker is built to catch. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "but", "buy", "busy", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English bush, from Old English *busċ, *bysċ (“copse, grove, scrub”, in placenames), from Proto-West Germanic *busk, from Proto-Germanic *buskaz (“bush, thicket”), probably from Proto-Indo-European *bʰuH- (“to grow”). Doublet of bosque. Cognates … The correct English form is bush, spelled B-U-S-H.
Definition
- 1A woody plant distinguished from a tree by its multiple stems and lower height, being usually less than six metres tall; a horticultural rather than strictly botanical category.
- 2A shrub cut off, or a shrublike branch of a tree.
- 3A shrub or branch, properly, a branch of ivy (sacred to Bacchus), hung out at vintners' doors, or as a tavern sign; hence, a tavern sign, and symbolically, the tavern itself.
- 4A person's pubic hair, especially a woman's.
- 5The tail, or brush, of a fox.
Etymology
From Middle English bush, from Old English *busċ, *bysċ (“copse, grove, scrub”, in placenames), from Proto-West Germanic *busk, from Proto-Germanic *buskaz (“bush, thicket”), probably from Proto-Indo-European *bʰuH- (“to grow”). Doublet of bosque. Cognates Cognate with Saterland Frisian Busk (“bush”), West Frisian bosk (“forest”), Dutch bos, bosch (“forest, wood”), German Busch (“bush, shrub; small forest, grove”), Luxembourgish Bësch (“forest, wood”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Nynorsk busk (“bush, shrub”), Icelandic buski (“bush, shrub”), Swedish buske (“bush, shrub”), Persian بیشه (bêša/biše, “woods”). Latin and Romance forms (Latin boscus, Occitan bòsc, French bois, bûche and buisson, Italian bosco and boscaglia, Spanish bosque, Portuguese bosque) derive from the Germanic. Compare typologically Russian за́росли (zárosli) (akin to расти́ (rastí)). Also compare Russian быльё (bylʹjó) (distantly cognate via *bʰuH-).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: bbush,bsuh,buhs,bushh,bussh,ubsh
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of bush - counted as single-character edits (an insertion, a deletion, or a substituted letter). The larger the bar, the easier the typo is to spot; one-edit slips are the ones that sneak past readers.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “bush”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is B-U-S-H - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /bʊʃ/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “but” - see the side-by-side comparison. bush vs but
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.