bud

Meanings

Noun

• A newly sprouted leaf or blossom that has not yet unfolded.
• Something that has begun to develop.
• A small rounded body in the process of splitting from an organism, which may grow into a genetically identical new organism.
• Potent cannabis taken from the flowering part of the plant (the “bud”), or marijuana generally.
• A weaned calf in its first year, so called because the horns are then beginning to bud.
• A pretty young girl.
• Buddy, friend.

Verb

• To form buds.
• To reproduce by splitting off buds.
• To begin to grow, or to issue from a stock in the manner of a bud, as a horn.
• To be like a bud in respect to youth and freshness, or growth and promise.
• To put forth as a bud.
• To graft by inserting a bud under the bark of another tree.

Origin

• From Middle English budde ("bud, seed pod"), from Proto-Germanic *buddǭ (compare Dutch bot ("bud"), German Hagebutte, regional German Butzen ("seed pod"), Swedish dialect bodd), perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *bʰew-, *bu-.