noun
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a person who lives in the bush
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an unsophisticated uncouth person
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a member of a bush fire brigade
adjective
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covered or overgrown with bushes
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thick and shaggy
bushy eyebrows
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of bushy
First recorded in 1350–1400, bushy is from the Middle English word busshi. See bush 1, -y 1
Explanation
Bushy things have the rounded shape and thick texture of a bush. You could describe your grandfather as having thick gray hair and bushy black eyebrows. You can use the adjective bushy to describe all kinds of things — you might wake up with your curly hair looking quite bushy, or adopt a particularly bushy old cat from the animal shelter. Shrubs are usually bushy, of course, while other plants may grow tall and spindly or spread in a squat and bushy shape. In the 14th century, bushy meant "overgrown with bushes."
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
"Here we have two hominin species that are together. And human evolution is not linear, it's a bushy tree, there are life forms that go extinct."
From Science Daily ● May 16, 2026
The singer is always like this – bright eyed, bushy tailed, full of beans before breakfast - but at Glastonbury, he had an extra spring in his step.
From BBC ● Oct. 22, 2025
Murayama, who was also well-known for his distinctive bushy eyebrows, was elected as the prime minister in a coalition government that also included the Liberal Democratic Party, Japan's dominant postwar political force.
From Barron's ● Oct. 17, 2025
With his face all but covered in a bushy, gray-flecked beard, his Gogo makes a milder impression than Mr. Winter’s Didi.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 29, 2025
“You ‘need’ them?” she asked, her bushy eyebrows practically leaving her face in disbelief.
From "Chronicles of a Lizard Nobody" by Patrick Ness
The island tree is shorter and bushier, its bark thicker and its cones rounder than the mainland tree.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 20, 2026
If they survive, those same trees will be bushier and healthier the following year.
From Salon ● May 16, 2024
To plant seedlings with bushier roots, the company acquired a machine that pumps out cigarlike tubes of soil wrapped in brown paper and produces far more seedlings a week than a human could manage.
From New York Times ● Apr. 4, 2024
At least in principle, the bird family tree could get even bushier.
From Science Magazine ● Mar. 31, 2024
Still curly, but the curls were larger and bushier and hung past her shoulders.
From "Boy 2.0" by Tracey Baptiste
But Kimbrel, the Red Sox closer, and Turner, the Dodgers’ third baseman, now seem to be competing for the unofficial title of bushiest, scraggliest, most unkempt beard in sports.
From New York Times ● Oct. 22, 2018
I’d plant more hydrangeas, but it has some of the bushiest jasmine I’ve yet seen.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 4, 2016
I’d written three features before I’d arrived, but they were the bushiest of the bush league.
From Salon ● Mar. 21, 2013
He felt and looked like a fighter pilot; he had grown the bushiest, sharpest-pointed fighter-pilot mustache in England.
From Time Magazine Archive
His eyebrows stood out at an angle above his wild eyes, and were the bushiest she had ever seen, except Squire Pettijohn's.
From The Brass Bound Box by Horne, Diantha W.
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
