Chapter Bush to Buttons of B by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Bush to Buttons

Bush One beats the bush, but another has the hare, i.e. one does the work, but another reaps the profit. The Latins said, Sic vos non vobis. The allusion is to beating the bush to start game. (See Beating .)
   Good wine needs no bush. A good article will make itself known without being puffed. The booths in fairs used to be dressed with ivy, to indicate that wine was sold there, ivy being sacred to Bacchus. An ivy-bush was once the common sign of taverns, and especially of private houses where beer or wine could be obtained by travellers. In France, a peasant who sells his vineyard has to put a green bush over his door.
   The proverb is Latin, and shows that the Romans introduced the custom into Europe. “Vino vendibili hedera non opus est” (Columella). It was also common to France. “Au vin qui se vend bien, il ne faut point de lierre.”

“If it be true that good wine needs no bush, `tis true that a good play needs no prologue.”
Shakespeare: As You Like It (Epilogue).

   To take to the bush. To become bushrangers, like runaway convicts who live by plunder. The bush in this case means what the Dutch call bosch, the uncleared land as opposed to towns and clearings.

“Everything being much cheaper in Toronto than away in the bush.”- Geikie: Life in the Woods.

Bushel To measure other people's corn by one's own bushel. To make oneself the standard of right and wrong; to appraise everything as it accords or disagrees with one's own habits of thought and preconceived opinions; to be extremely bigoted and self-opiniated.
   Under a bushel. Secretly; in order to hide it.

“Do men light a candle and put it under a bushel?”- Matt. v. 15.

Bushman (Dutch, Boschjesman). Natives of South Africa who live in the “bush”; the aborigines of the Cape; dwellers in the Australian “bush;” a bush farmer.

“Bushmen ... are the only nomades in the country. They never cultivate the soil, nor rear any domestic animal save wretched dogs.”- Livingstone: Travels, chap. ii. p. 55.

Bushrangers Escaped convicts who have taken refuge in the Australian “bush,” and subsist by plunder.

“The bushrangers at first were absentees [i.e. escaped convicts] who were soon allured or driven to theft and violence. So early as 1808 they had, by systematic robbery, excited feelings of alarm.”- West: Tasmania.

Business, Busy Saxon, bysgian, the verb, bysig (busy); Dutch, bezigen; German, besorgniss (care, management); sorge (care); Saxon, seogan (to see). From the German sorgen we get the French soigner (to look after something), soigne, and be-sogne (business, or that which is our care and concern), with be-soin (something looked after but not found, hence “want”); the Italian besognio (a beggar).

Business To-morrow When the Spartans seized upon Thebes, they placed Archias over the garrison. Pelopidas, with eleven others, banded together to put Archias to the sword. A letter containing full details of the plot was given to the Spartan polemarch at the banquet table; but Archias thrust the letter under his cushion, saying, “Business tomorrow.” But long ere that sun arose he was numbered with the dead.

Busirane (3 syl.). An enchanter bound by Britomart. (Spenser: Faërie Queene, book iii. 11, 12.)

Busiris A king of Egypt, who used to immolate to the gods all strangers who set foot on his shores. Hercules was seized by him; and would have fallen a victim, but he broke his chain, and slew the inhospitable king.
   Busiris, according to Milton, is the Pharaoh who was drowned in the Red Sea.

“Vex'd the Red-Sea coast, whose waves o'er-threw
Busiris and his Memphian chivalry.”
Paradise Lost, book i. 306, 307.

Buskin Tragedy. The Greek tragic actors used to wear a sandal some two or three