Meaning

A woody plant smaller than a tree, and usually with several stems from the same base..

Definitions by Sense

1. A woody plant smaller than a tree, and usually with several stems from the same base.
2. (obsolete) To lop; to prune.
3. (rare) To plant a shrub in a yard, garden, etc.; to prune a bush or other plant into a shrub.
4. 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.
5. (rare) To make or drink a shrub (liquor drink).
6. (ambitransitive, Kenya, slang) To mispronounce (a word or words) in another language in a manner that is influenced by one's mother tongue.
7. (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.

Example Sentences

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.

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.

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

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.

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.”

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) […]

Word Forms

• shrubs
• shrubbing
• shrubbed

Synonyms for shrub

Related Words

When Should You Use Shrub?

Use shrub when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

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