Also 5 lusch, 6 lushe. [? Onomatopœic alteration of LASH a. 3.]
1. Lax, flaccid; soft, tender. Obs. exc. dial.
c. 1440. Promp. Parv., 317/2. Lusch, or slak, laxus.
1567. Golding, Ovid’s Met., XV. 189 b. Then greene, and voyd of strength, and lush, and foggye, is the blade.
1580. Blundevil, Curing Horses, v. 4 b. The flesh of his lips and of all his bodie is lush and feeble.
1587. Golding, trans. Solinus, vii. G. Shrubbes, which so soone as they be in the deepes of the water, are lushe and almost like a grystle to touch.
1815. Monthly Mag., XXXIX. 125 (Essex Dialect), Lush, Loose.
1847. Halliwell, s.v., Ground easily turned over is said to be lush.
1898. B. Kirkby, Lakeland Wds. (E. D. D.). That beef’s varra lush and tender.
2. Of plants, esp. of grass: Succulent and luxuriant in growth.
The literary currency of this sense (which seems still to exist in s. w. dialects) is due to the recollection of the instance in Shaks. (quot. 1610). A conjecture of Theobald’s, adopted by Johnson and many later editors, substituted ‘lush woodbine’ (metri gr.) for ‘luscious woodbine’ in Mids. N., II. i. 251. The conjecture is now discredited, but the passage as emended has had many echoes in 19th c. literature.
1610. Shaks., Temp., II. i. 52. How lush and lusty the grasse lookes?
1817. Keats, ‘I stood tiptoe,’ 31. And let a lush laburnum oversweep them. Ibid. (1818), Endym., I. 941. Overhead, Hung a lush screen of drooping weeds.
1820. Shelley, Question, III. 1. In the warm hedge grew lush eglantine.
1832. Tennyson, Dream Fair Wom., xviii. And at the root thro’ lush green grasses burn’d The red anemone.
1862. W. W. Story, Roba di R., i. (1864), 1. The broken arches of a Roman bridge, nearly buried in the lush growth of weeds, shrubs, and flowers.
1867. Spectator, 6 April, 384. The lush tropical forests of South America.
1872. Black, Adv. Phaeton, xiii. Lush meadows, with the cattle standing deep in the grass.
1876. Browning, Pacchiarotto, Prol. ii. And lush and lithe do the creepers clothe Yon wall I watch, with a wealth of green.
1884. Sat. Rev., 19 July, 80. Bound together by the lush growth of the bramble.
b. Of a season: Characterized by luxuriance of vegetation.
1818. Keats, Endym., I. 46. And, as the year Grows lush in juicy stalks, I’ll smoothly steer My little boat [etc.].
1891. T. Hardy, Tess, II. 109. The supernumerary milkers of the lush green season had been dismissed.
c. Luxuriantly covered with.
1863. Lytton, Caxtoniana, xxii. The farmers … allow their hedges to … spread four yards thick, all lush with convolvulus and honeysuckle.
d. transf. and fig.
1851. Mrs. Browning, Casa Guidi Wind., I. 1088. Mow this green lush falseness to the roots.
1891. T. Hardy, Tess, II. 55. The æsthetic, sensuous, pagan pleasure in natural life and lush womanhood.
¶ 3. Shakespeare’s use has by some writers been misapprehended as referring to color.
1744. Shaks., Wks. (ed. Hanmer), VI. Gloss., Lush [Temp., II. i. 52], of a dark deep full Colour, opposite to pale and faint.
1860. T. Martin, Horace, 60. The lush rose lingers late.
4. Comb.
1818. Keats, Endym., II. 52. Listening still, Hour after hour, to each lush-leaved rill.
1870. Morris, Earthly Par., IV. 52. The lush-cold blue-bells.
Hence Lushly adv., Lushness.
c. 1440. Promp. Parv., 317/2. Luschly, laxe (K. P. rare).
1883. Miss Broughton, Belinda, III. IV. iv. 231. The long lythrums growing lushly beside them.
1900. Contemp. Rev., April, 552. In the lushness of early summer.
1902. Nation (N. Y.), 9 Jan., 39/2. The customary lushness of rhetoric that is rather French than English.
