/ʃɹʌb/, /ʃɹʊb/
OriginFrom Middle English schrub, schrob, (also unassibilated as scrub), from Old English *sċrob (in placenames) and sċrybb (“a shrub; shrubbery; underbrush”); akin to Norwegian skrubbe (“the dwarf cornel tree”).
- A woody plant smaller than a tree, and usually with several stems from the same base.
“No trees have grown on the windswept Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic Ocean for tens of thousands of years — just shrubs and other low-lying vegetation. That’s why a recent arboreal discovery ne”
“Tara flour is one of two products made from the seed pods of a thorny shrub native to Peru. One of those, tara gum, has been used safely for years as a thickening agent or stabilizer in human foods.”
- countable, uncountableA liquor composed of vegetable acid, fruit juice (especially lemon), sugar, sometimes vinegar, and a small amount of spirit as a preservative.
- Kenya, slangA word mispronounced by replacing some consonant sounds with others of a similar place of articulation as influenced by one's mother tongue.
“It is not only in face-to-face contexts that Kenyans police shrubbing; there are newspaper columns inviting readers to send in shrubs that they have witnessed, […]”
“One of the first people to go on air on X Fm, Raabia (It’s not a kuyu [Kikuyu] shrub for labia) is about to exit the station, she’s being replaced by Mao (their lispy producer) […]”
- obsoleteTo lop; to prune.
“The Papistes[…]though they be woll shrubbed, and shred, yet they begin euen nowe before the springe, to budde.”
- rareTo plant a shrub in a yard, garden, etc.; to prune a bush or other plant into a shrub.
- rareTo make or drink a shrub (liquor drink).
- Kenya, ambitransitive, slangTo mispronounce (a word or words) in another language in a manner that is influenced by one's mother tongue.
“The people who benefit from making fun of shrubbing, therefore, are Kenyans who do not speak indigenous languages, because they are less likely to shrub than Kenyans who learned English as a second la”
“However, Mwandani and her brother had noted that their mother had shrubbed and pointed it out right away.”
“It is still considered embarrassing if people in authority like teachers or newscasters “shrub.””
Formsshrubs(plural) · shrubs(present, singular, third-person) · shrubbing(participle, present) · shrubbed(participle, past) · shrubbed(past)