DCHP-1 Online

bushed ((1)) 1

• 1 adj. See 1940 quote.

  • 1890  "Say . . . did yez hear that ould Schneider, the contractor, was busht--gone up higher than a kite?"
  • 1940  Though the word "bushed" originally connoted partial or complete insanity from living too long or too much alone in the bush, it is also applied nowadays to any mental quirk or derangement brought about in the treeless areas of the Arctic.
  • 1965  And at Spartan's bleak Pelly Bay camp in the Canadian Arctic, a bushed cook arose from bed one midnight . . . set about frying every single egg in the stores, and then nailed them all, sunnyside up, to the cookshack wall.

• 2 adj. bedevilled, frightened through unfamiliarity with the bush.

  • 1910  (1921)  "I'll trail behind the lord mayor of London--dash him, he's 'bout as near bushed as I ever see a man."

• 3 † adj. exhausted; tired out.

  • 1910  (1921)  "I was that danged near bushed, toward the last that I was feared I might go right on sleepin'. . . ."
  • 1964  Ehricht . . . arrived back at camp bushed.

• 4 adj. confined to the bush, as when lost or cut off by weather.

  • 1930  "I been bushed all afternoon in this here damn country of yours, an' got so turned around with fences an' bum trails I don't know which end of me's up."
  • 1956  I didn't know the country to the West, and I might follow a big creek thinking it would lead to the Yukon River, and thus find myself bushed, again with winter on my neck.

• 5 adj. living in the wilderness, away from civilization, by choice.

  • 1942  Even in Ungava, wandering was considered fit only for "bushed" white folks--the good-for-nothings, the "squaw-men."
  • 1961  Most common symptom of the person who may be called "bushed" is his dislike for the cities, the crowds and the traffic of "outside". . . .
  • 1961  [Caption] We're "Bushed" and We Love It.