Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Old English bog "shoulder, arm," extended in Old English to "twig, branch" (compare limb (n.1)), from Proto-Germanic *bogaz (cognates: Old Norse bogr "shoulder," Old High German buog, German Bug "shoulder, hock, joint"), from PIE *bhagus "elbow, forearm" (cognates: Sanskrit bahus "arm," Armenian bazuk, Greek pakhys "forearm"). The "limb of a tree" sense is peculiar to English.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Bough \Bough\, n. [OE. bogh, AS. b[=o]g, b[=o]h, bough, shoulder; akin to Icel. b[=o]gr shoulder, bow of a ship, Sw. bog, Dan. bov, OHG. buog, G. bug, and to Gr.? ( for ? ) forearm, Skr. b[=a]hu (for bh[=a]ghu) arm. [root]88, 25
Cf. Bow of a ship.] 1. An arm or branch of a tree, esp. a large arm or main branch.
A gallows. [Archaic]
Bough is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
- Frank Bough (born 1933), British television presenter
- Samuel Bough (1822–1878), Scottish landscape painter
n. any of the larger branches of a tree
n. A firm branch of a tree.
Usage examples of "bough".
Below the boughs the road swept along the crest of the crag and thence curved inward, and one surveying the scene from the windows of a bungalow at no great distance could look straight beyond the point of the precipice and into the heart of the sunset, still aflare about the west.
Whear grass and daisies grew, An' trees wi spreeadin boughs aboon Ther solemn shadows threw.
As they were rowed back to where the Golden Bough was anchored, Llewellyn and Winterton were in deep and earnest conversation.
He left Ned Tyler in charge of the Golden Bough with Althuda, and ordered them to remain anchored well offshore, and await his return, The distress signal would be a red Chinese rocket.
The Golden Bough would show no flash in the moonlight when they sailed into Adulis Bay to take unawares the anchored fleet of Islam.
A narrow path beneath over-arching boughs of cherry-laurel and arbutus, immediately facing the lodge, caught her eye, and down this she at once turned her footsteps.
With the horned moon hooked round the topmost limb, And the owl awatch on the branch below, What is the song of the winds that blow Through your boughs so mysteriously?
So thick the branches and the leves grene, Beshaded all the alleys that there were, And midst of every arbour might be seen, The sharpe, grene, swete juniper, Growing so fair with branches here and there, That as it seemed to a lyf without, The boughs did spread the arbour all about.
The boxwood hedges and sweeping fir boughs were frosted with white, glittering with faint crystalline sparkles.
She is his deepest innocence in spaces of bough and hay before wishes were given a separate name to warn that they might not come true, and his lithe Parisian daughter of joy, beneath the eternal mirror, forswearing perfumes, capeskin to the armpits, all that is too easy, for his impoverishment and more worthy love.
One whipping bough caught Weed on his cauliflower ear, leaving a line of blood.
Lupe and I were lying among tall grasses beneath a ceiba tree, its boughs looped with epiphytic vines, and the vines studded with orchid blooms.
The thatched roofs of the cottage and outbuildings looked out from among spreading rowans bubbling with coralline berries, from whose boughs small bells of bronze depended.
He was in the midst of small birds who made a cheerful twittering from the greening boughs, cushats too were busy, and the thickets were full of friendly beasts.
Its mattress of carefully laid pine boughs creaked lightly as it took his weight, blending with the strangled snore that came from in front the dead fireplace as Doxy turned over in her sleep.