boscage

• boskage

From the Middle English boskage, from the Old French boscage, from Vulgar Latin *boscāticum, from Late Latin boscus, from Frankish *busk (compare Middle Dutch busch), from Proto-Germanic *buskaz (“forest, woods”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /bɒskɪdʒ/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /bɑskɪd͡ʒ/

boscage (countable and uncountable, plural boscages)

1. A place set with trees or mass of shrubbery, a grove or thicket.
   • 1811, Ben Jonson, The Dramatic Works: Embellished with Portraits, volume 4, page 571:

     At the entrance of the king, the first traverse was drawn, and the lower descent of the mountain discovered, which was the pendant of a hill to life, with divers boscages and grovets upon the steep or hanging grounds thereof.

   • 1888, “T'Yeer-na-n-Oge”, in W. B. Yeats, editor, Irish Fairy and Folk Tales:

     The shadiest boskage covers it perpetually.

   • 1950 March, Eric S. Tonks, “The Whitacre—Hampton-in-Arden Line, L.M.R.”, in Railway Magazine, page 187:

     An abundance of bird life dwells in the luxuriant boscage of the cuttings, and the whole six miles provide a rich field of study for the botanist.

2. (law) Mast-nuts of forest trees, used as food for pigs, or any such sustenance as wood and trees yield to cattle.
3. (art) Among painters, a picture depicting a wooded scene.
4. A tax on wood.

• bocage
• bosk
• bosky

1728, Cyclopaedia, a publication in the public domain.

• bocages

boscage oblique singular, m (oblique plural boscages, nominative singular boscages, nominative plural boscage)

1. Alternative form of boschage