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 thebush , especially as afugitive ; a person whoclears 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
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Examples
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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?
pamelad commented on the word bushwhacker
An unsophisticated person from the bush or.....
January 17, 2007