hurst

A wood or grove.

Noun

  1. A wood or grove.
    • Where, to her neighboring Chase, the curteous Forrest show’d So just conceived joy, that from each rising a hurst, Where many a goodlie Oake had carefullie been nurst, - 1612, Michael Drayton, Poly-Olbion, song 2 p. 27:
    • ‘How you grandiloquise. A forest of uncertainty. But there – I slow down, as you say. I hesitate. I wonder if – no , let’s try further down. I cannot see the hurst for the elms.’ - 1963, P[hilip] M[aitland] Hubbard,...
    • A blackthorn seedling can in this way expand into a hurst of 0,1-0, 5 ha in the space of 10 years, […] - 2000, Grazing Ecology and Forest History, →ISBN, page 150:

Origin

From Middle English hirste (“wood, grove; hillock; sandbank, sandbar”), from Old English hyrst (“hillock, eminence, height, wood, wooded eminence”), from Proto-West Germanic *hursti; akin to Dutch horst (“thicket; bird's nest”), German Horst (“thicket, nest”). Doublet of horst.

Forms

hursts

Related

firth grove holt shaw thicket tree wald weald wold wood woods

Derived

Bredhurst Elmhurst Goudhurst Hawkhurst Higher Hurst Hurst Green Lyndhurst Sandhurst Sissinghurst Staplehurst