tussock
nounUS, UK /ˈtʌs.ək/
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”).
1
A tuft or clump of green grass or similar verdure, forming a small hillock.
- 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:
- 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:
1 more example
- 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:
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:
- Derived terms
- blue tussock, ficus tussock moth, hard tussock, nassella tussock, plumed tussock, red tussock, serrated tussock, sweet tussock, tussock bellflower, tussock caterpillar, tussocked, tussocker, tussock grass, tussockgrass, tussockland, tussock moth, tussock sedge, tussocky, yellow tussock