DCHP-1 Online

bushwhacker

• 1 n. a person who takes up land in the bush, clears it, and makes a home there, back from the centres of civilization; backwoodsman.

  See also: backwoodsman  

  • c1902  (1912)  And were the men carving a way through the wilderness only the bushwhackers who have pioneered other forest lands?
  • 1845  The bush whacker is nothing of the "bog trotter" in his appearance. . . .
  • 1959  It is on the subject of pioneers--trailbreakers, bushwhackers, sodbusters, homesteaders--that [he] waxes most eloquent. . . .

• 2 n. a country person; a rough, unrefined backwoodsman.

  • 1833  There are, perhaps, few children of the same age in Halifax that read better than this little bush-whacker of Tatamagouche.
  • 1887  There was a lot of country fellows, regular bushwhackers, laying around . . . asking us all sorts of questions. . . .
  • 1916  . . . I am not sure whether it was one of Macdonald's plugs or another sort . . . which furnished bushwhacker wags with the bogus five-cent pieces that sometimes dropped into the collection plate.

• 3 n. a person living in the bush and familiar with its ways.

  See also: bushman (def. 2)  

  • 1910  "Come on, this old bush-whacker ought to be glad to see us, if it's only to hear a voice that isn't his own!"
  • 1963  [The Canada jay] is the companion and familiar of the backwoodsman, the bushwhacker, the lumber jack and the trapper.