shrub

• (Southern England, US) enPR: shrŭb, IPA^(key): /ʃɹʌb/

  • Audio (US):

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• (Northern England, Ireland) IPA^(key): /ʃɹʊb/
• Rhymes: -ʌb

From 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”).

shrub (plural shrubs)

1. A woody plant smaller than a tree, and usually with several stems from the same base.
   • 2024 September 27, Katie Hunt, “Scientists discover hidden ancient forest on treeless island”, in CNN‎^[1]:

     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 nearly 20 feet (6 meters) beneath the ground caught researchers’ attention.

   • 2024 October 3, Sandee LaMotte, “‘I’ve never experienced pain like that’: Consumers pay the price for untested food ingredients”, in CNN‎^[2]:

     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.

• (plant): bush

shrub (third-person singular simple present shrubs, present participle shrubbing, simple past and past participle shrubbed)

1. (obsolete) To lop; to prune.
   • 1573, Anthony Anderson, An Exposition of the Hymne commonly called Benedictus:

     The Papistes […] though they be woll shrubbed, and shred, yet they begin euen nowe before the springe, to budde.

2. (rare) To plant a shrub in a yard, garden, etc.; to prune a bush or other plant into a shrub.

• shrub out
• shrub up

From Arabic شِرَاب (širāb, “a drink, beverage”), شَرِبَ (šariba, “to drink”), akin to syrup, sherbet, and sorbet.

shrub (countable and uncountable, plural shrubs)

1. A liquor composed of vegetable acid, fruit juice (especially lemon), sugar, sometimes vinegar, and a small amount of spirit as a preservative. Modern shrub is usually non-alcoholic, but in earlier times it was often mixed with a substantial amount of spirit such as brandy or rum, thus making it a liqueur.

shrub (third-person singular simple present shrubs, present participle shrubbing, simple past and past participle shrubbed)

1. (rare) To make or drink a shrub (liquor drink).

Of unknown origin. First attested in the 2000s.

Chiefly used in respect to English or Swahili pronounced in a manner characteristic of another Kenyan language.

shrub (third-person singular simple present shrubs, present participle shrubbing, simple past and past participle shrubbed)

1. (ambitransitive, Kenya, slang) To mispronounce (a word or words) in another language in a manner that is influenced by one's mother tongue.
   • 2010, Norma Mendoza-Denton, Dana Osborne, quoting Heidi Orcutt-Gachiri, “Two Languages, Two Identities?”, in Carmen Llamas, Dominic Watt, editors, Shrubbing and the evaluation of expertise in Kenyan English and Kiswahili: placing Kenyan indigenous languages at risk, 2008, page 7, quoted in Language and Identities, →ISBN, page 121:

     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 language in school and may have a heavier accent.

   • 2014, Michael Gathonjia Wairungu, “The notion of shrubbing vs. Mother tongue interference: a question of generation”, in "A Language of Many Hats": The Rise of Sheng and other Linguistic Styles among Urban Youth in Kenya, page 310:

     However, Mwandani and her brother had noted that their mother had shrubbed and pointed it out right away.

   • 2019 April 19, Alice Wairimu Nderitu, “Harro! I shrub because, really, I have no otherwise, do I?”, in The East African‎^[3], archived from the original on 16 April 2023:

     It is still considered embarrassing if people in authority like teachers or newscasters “shrub.”

• shrubbing

shrub (plural shrubs)

1. (Kenya, slang) A word mispronounced by replacing some consonant sounds with others of a similar place of articulation as influenced by one's mother tongue.
   • 2010, Norma Mendoza-Denton, Dana Osborne, “Two Languages, Two Identities?”, in Carmen Llamas, Dominic Watt, editors, Language and Identities, →ISBN, page 121:

     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, […]

   • 2011 September 23, Yeye, “Fuck it!”, in Media Madness‎^[4], archived from the original on 24 September 2011:

     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) […]

• “shrub, v.²”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, July 2023.

• Brush, bruhs, brush, burhs