Dictionary

hurst en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• /hɝst/ (General-American)
• (Southern-England) audio
• /hɜːst/ (Received-Pronunciation)

Etymology

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.

Meanings

1. (qualifier:rare outside place names) A wood or grove.
   • A recognizable world seems to balloon up out of the names […]. Lovehurst down in the clay lands towards Staplehurst means "the hurst that was left to someone in a will": Legacy Wood. Its near neighbor, Tolehurst, originally called Tunlafahirst, means something like Heir's Farm Wood. 2010, Adam Nicolson, Sissinghurst: A Castle's Unfinished History, page 124:
   • 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, Flush as May, New York, N.Y.: London House & Maxwell, →LCCN, page 158:
   • 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:

Forms

Deriveds

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

Relateds

firth · thicket · grove · wald · woods · shaw · holt · wood · weald · tree · wold

Translations (7)

gl frondía (a wood or grove) · bg горичка (a wood or grove) · gl touza (a wood or grove) · ru роща (a wood or grove) · nds-de Huorst (a wood or grove) · nl horst (a wood or grove) · eo bosko (a wood or grove)