Dictionary

tussock en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• (Southern-England) audio
• /ˈtʌs.ək/ (General-American, UK)

Etymology

Uncertain. Likely from or related to tusk + -ock (diminutive suffix). Compare Middle High German zūsach (“thicket”), a derivative of Middle High German zūse (“lock of hair”). Compare also Scottish Gaelic dosag (“little tuft”).

Meanings

1. A tuft or clump of green grass or similar verdure, forming a small hillock.
   • One Kashmiri morning in the early spring of 1915, my grandfather Aadam Aziz hit his nose against a frost-hardened tussock of earth while attempting to pray. 1981, Salman Rushdie, chapter 1, in Midnight's Children:
   • Next morning I was off to Lochtully, which, as you know, is in the north of Perthshire. It stands three miles from the station, a great gray pinnacled house, with two towers cocking out above the fir woods, like a hare’s ears from a tussock of grass. 1895, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, The Stark Munro Letters: […], London: Longmans, Green, and Co., →OCLC:
   • An Indian grazing ground is all rocks and scrub and tussocks and little ravines, among which the herds scatter and disappear. 1894 May, Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book, London; New York, N.Y.: Macmillan and Co., published June 1894, →OCLC:
2. Tussock grass.
   • I yearned, painfully, for […] a sight and touch of a hillside covered with golden tussock. 1985, Janet Frame, An Angel at my Table, Virago, published 2024, page 401:

Forms

Deriveds

tussock grass · sweet tussock · hard tussock · tussock caterpillar · nassella tussock · tussock bellflower · red tussock · tussocker · tussocked · tussock sedge · ficus tussock moth · blue tussock · tussockland · plumed tussock · tussock moth · yellow tussock · tussocky · tussockgrass · serrated tussock

Translations (21)

fi tupas (tuft or clump of grass or verdure) · wyi bowat (tuft or clump of grass or verdure) · ru ко́чка (tuft or clump of grass or verdure) · nl pol (tuft or clump of grass or verdure) · hu zsombék (tuft or clump of grass or verdure) · ga tom (tuft or clump of grass or verdure) · izh könkörä (tuft or clump of grass or verdure) · bg туфа (tuft or clump of grass or verdure) · fr tussack (tuft or clump of grass or verdure) · mi wi (tuft or clump of grass or verdure) · izh mätäs (tuft or clump of grass or verdure) · nl graspol (tuft or clump of grass or verdure) · ga tortóg (tuft or clump of grass or verdure) · gl toutizo (tuft or clump of grass or verdure) · is þúfa (tuft or clump of grass or verdure) · mi wīwī (tuft or clump of grass or verdure) · fi mätäs (tuft or clump of grass or verdure) · gl touza (tuft or clump of grass or verdure) · de Grasbüschel (tuft or clump of grass or verdure) · eu belar-sasi (tuft or clump of grass or verdure) · pl kępa (tuft or clump of grass or verdure)