boscage
/bɒskɪdʒ/
Etymology
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”).
boscage means A place set with trees or mass of shrubbery, a grove or thicket. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 87 out of 100.
boscage is pronounced /bɒskɪdʒ/.
Why “boscage” is a great word
BOSCAGE — [Noun] A mass of trees or shrubs forming a thicket or wooded landscape. From the Middle English boskage, from the Old French boscage, from Vulgar Latin *boscāticum ("wooded place"), from Late Latin boscus ("wood"), from Frankish *busk ("bush, woods"), from Proto-Germanic *buskaz ("forest, woods"). First attested in late Middle English. Unlike a "grove," which suggests an open, orderly stand, or a "thicket," which denotes an impenetrable snarl, boscage evokes the dense, pictorial entirety of a wildwood. It is the deep-green tangle at the edge of a cultivated field, the shadowy architecture of branches in a medieval illumination, and the hushed, vine-choked corner where light falls in dappled coins—a verdant obscurity testifying to the world's quiet, unmanaged fecundity.
noun
- A place set with trees or mass of shrubbery, a grove or thicket.“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.”
- Mast-nuts of forest trees, used as food for pigs, or any such sustenance as wood and trees yield to cattle.
- Among painters, a picture depicting a wooded scene.
- A tax on wood.