hush
verbnounverbnouncommon in dialogue
- //hʌʃ//
- //hʊʃ//
To become quiet.
verb
- 1
To become quiet.
- 2
To make quiet.
- 3
To appease; to allay; to soothe.
VVilt thou then / Huſh my Cares thus, and ſhelter me vvith Love?
And hush’d my deepest grief of all.
Etymology
From Middle English huschen (“to hush”) (as past participle husht (“silent; hushed”) and interjection husht (“quiet!”)). Cognate with Low German huschen, hüssen (“to hush; lull”), German huschen (“to shoo; scurry”), Danish hysse (“to hush”), and maybe Albanian hesht.
noun
- 1
A silence, especially after some noise.
It is the hush of night.
And there fell a hush upon the gods when they saw that Māna rested, and there was silence on Pegāna save for the drumming of Skarl.
verb
- 1
To rush, to gush.
On the fluir, bluid an punch now hush't leyke a stream, […]
[…] water, far down below, roaring and hushing over the rocks, […]
- 2
To send forth a rush of water over (some ground) so as to clear off the soil and other materials overlying, and thus uncover or separate out, ore.
[…] worn its Chanel so deep in some Part of its Course as to work upon some mineral Substance, which gives it the Colour of Water hushed from Lead-mines, and is so strong as to tinge the River Derwent […]
The earliest method of searching for lead ore was by collecting the water in dams and hushing the surface of the ground where metalliferous veins existed.
[He] had promised … that he would have a stop put to the hushing process.
Etymology
Unclear; possibly onomatopoeic.
noun
- 1
Water which has been used to clear the soil off of some (area of) rock or ore.
[…] the hush from the lead mines on the moors near that place enters the Arkle, and the stream below suffers materially, the fishing being of little good;
The great cause of the scarcity of fish in this river is without doubt the "hush" coming down from the lead mines in the upper waters. […]
- 2
A part of a mine or quarry where ore is to be, or has been, excavated by an artificial flow of water.
[…] lead ore occurs abundantly in the upper crust of the earth, and this phrase would have been quite applicable to the early finds of shoad-stones of lead ore in Weardale, to the importance of which the scars of the "hushes" that still furrow the fell-sides bear conclusive evidence.
After the first hush miners loosened the rock in the floor of the hush with picks and crow bars [...] a torrent of water was sent down which swept and tore the loosened stuff over the grate, trapping much of the ore that was being moved. In this method a hush could be used for over a century and could grow […]
Forms
- plural
- hushes
- past tense
- hushed
- past participle
- hushed
- present participle
- hushing
- third person singular
- hushes