BULRUSH

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does bulrush mean? 

• BULRUSH (noun)
  The noun BULRUSH has 2 senses:

1. tall marsh plant with cylindrical seed heads that explode when mature shedding large quantities of down; its long flat leaves are used for making mats and chair seats; of North America, Europe, Asia and North Africa

2. tall rush with soft erect or arching stems found in Eurasia, Australia, New Zealand, and common in North America

  Familiarity information: BULRUSH used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• BULRUSH (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Tall marsh plant with cylindrical seed heads that explode when mature shedding large quantities of down; its long flat leaves are used for making mats and chair seats; of North America, Europe, Asia and North Africa

Classified under:

Nouns denoting plants

Synonyms:

bullrush; bulrush; cat's-tail; nailrod; reed mace; reedmace; Typha latifolia

Hypernyms ("bulrush" is a kind of...):

cattail (tall erect herbs with sword-shaped leaves; cosmopolitan in fresh and salt marshes)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Tall rush with soft erect or arching stems found in Eurasia, Australia, New Zealand, and common in North America

Classified under:

Nouns denoting plants

Synonyms:

bullrush; bulrush; common rush; Juncus effusus; soft rush

Hypernyms ("bulrush" is a kind of...):

rush (grasslike plants growing in wet places and having cylindrical often hollow stems)

Holonyms ("bulrush" is a member of...):

genus Juncus; Juncus (type genus of the Juncaceae; perennial tufted glabrous marsh plants of temperate regions: rushes)

 Context examples 

All at once there began to go a sort of bustle among the bulrushes; a wild duck flew up with a quack, another followed, and soon over the whole surface of the marsh a great cloud of birds hung screaming and circling in the air.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

I had crossed a marshy tract full of willows, bulrushes, and odd, outlandish, swampy trees; and I had now come out upon the skirts of an open piece of undulating, sandy country, about a mile long, dotted with a few pines and a great number of contorted trees, not unlike the oak in growth, but pale in the foliage, like willows.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)