hurst
nounUS /hɝst/ · UK /hɜːst/
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.
1
A wood or grove.
Rare outside place names
- 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:
2 more examples
- 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:
- 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:
- Derived terms
- Bredhurst, Elmhurst, Goudhurst, Hawkhurst, Higher Hurst, Hurst Green, Lyndhurst, Sandhurst, Sissinghurst, Staplehurst