Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun One accustomed to sojourn in the woods, or beat about among bushes.
  • noun In the civil war in the United States, a member of the irregular troops on the Confederate side engaged in guerrilla warfare; a guerrilla: a term applied by the Federal forces.
  • noun A short heavy scythe for cutting bushes.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun U.S. One accustomed to beat about, or travel through, bushes.
  • noun U.S. A guerrilla; a marauding assassin; one who pretends to be a peaceful citizen, but secretly harasses a hostile force or its sympathizers.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun US One who travels through the woods, off the designated path.
  • noun Australia A person who lives in the bush, especially as a fugitive; a person who clears woods and bush country.
  • noun US, historical A guerrilla (of either side) during the American Civil War.
  • noun dated Someone who attacks without warning.
  • noun A small, soft-floored inflatable boat (designed for use by one or two people).

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a Confederate guerrilla during the American Civil War
  • noun a disparaging term for an unsophisticated person

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From bush +‎ whacker.

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Examples

  • When the passports were delivered by the courier, I called the bushwhacker and pedagogue and silently gave him the papers.

    Fagots from the campfire, Louis J Dupre 1881

  • Now I never resented the epithet of "bushwhacker" - although there was no soldier to whom it applied less - because bushwhacking is a legitimate form of war, and it is just as fair and equally heroic to fire at an enemy from behind a bush as a breastwork or from the casemate of a fort.

    The memoirs of Colonel John S. Mosby, 1917

  • She could not help wondering what he would think of the difference between her and the girl he had known as a bushwhacker nurse.

    John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein Frank Richard Stockton 1868

  • MY brief partisan-ranger service as a "bushwhacker," and the trying and exciting experience as an "independent" with

    With Sabre and Scalpel. The Autobiography of a Soldier and Surgeon John Allan 1914

  • Professor used Twain's anonymous newspaper articles for a book about Twain's evolution from a "bushwhacker" Confederate to a skeptical champion of racial justice.

    Newswise: Latest News 2010

  • Professor used Twain's anonymous newspaper articles for a book about Twain's evolution from a "bushwhacker" Confederate to a skeptical champion of racial justice.

    Newswise: Latest News 2010

  • Newswise - How did Sam Clemens - a onetime "bushwhacker" Confederate who came from a slave-holding family - evolve into famed Mark Twain, a champion of racial justice in such books as Adventures of Huckleberry Finn?

    Newswise: Latest News 2010

  • Professor used Twain's anonymous newspaper articles for a book about Twain's evolution from a "bushwhacker" Confederate to a skeptical champion of racial justice.

    Newswise: Latest News 2010

  • Professor used Twain's anonymous newspaper articles for a book about Twain's evolution from a "bushwhacker" Confederate to a skeptical champion of racial justice.

    Newswise: Latest News 2010

  • Newswise - How did Sam Clemens - a onetime "bushwhacker" Confederate who came from a slave-holding family - evolve into famed Mark Twain, a champion of racial justice in such books as Adventures of Huckleberry Finn?

    Newswise: Latest News 2010

Comments

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  • An unsophisticated person from the bush or.....

    January 17, 2007