thrush

thrush¹ songbird

Etymology

The word for the songbird is inherited from Middle English thrusche, also thrusch,^[2][3][4] inherited from Old English þrysce, also þræsce,^[5][2][6] from Proto-Germanic *þruskijǭ.^[1][5][4] The OED explains the Old English pair as two ablaut forms, the second answering to Old High German drōsca and going back to a Germanic form with a different vowel.^[7][8] It is related to throstle,^[4][8][9] and cognate with Old Norse þröstr and German Drossel.^[5][2][9] Outside Germanic, Etymonline and Barnhart derive it from Proto-Indo-European *trozdo-,^[5][4] and the cognates include Latin turdus (“thrush”), the source of sturdy, and Lithuanian strazdas (“thrush”), Latvian strazds (“thrush”), Old Prussian tresde (“thrush”), Middle Irish truit (“starling”) and Welsh drudwy (“starling”).^[4][2][9] Barnhart adds that some of the forms were altered under the influence of the names and sounds of other birds.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The song thrush, in Old English vocabularies, where it glosses Latin bird names.^[7][6] The Anglian form þræsce is dated before 800 by the OED,^[7] Barnhart dates the word to about 1000,^[4] and Dictionary.com puts it before 900.^[10]

Semantic evolution

At first the word named the song thrush, also called the mavis,^[7][5] and it could also mean the mistle thrush.^[11] About 1250 The Owl and the Nightingale pairs "þrusche and þrostle".^[6][4] The vowel of the modern form developed in Middle English, as in clutch and crutch, while some dialects kept older forms into the 15th century, and thrice-cock survives as a dialect name for the mistle thrush.^[7] The rarer Old English type appears as thresh in the 17th century, and the OED compares its derivative thresher, dialectal in Oxfordshire and Berkshire, with the American thrasher.^[7] In the 17th century Holland's Pliny followed Latin turdus in calling a wrasse a sea-thrush.^[7] From about 1700, with qualifying words, the name spread to other species,^[7][11] and in the end to many birds that only resemble it.^[5] American slang took the singing bird as a figure for a woman singer: Walter Winchell's column has it in 1938,^[12] and the same column has the verb thrush, to sing, in 1939.^[12]

Timeline

• before 800 – Anglian þræsce, the song thrush.^[7]
• about 1250 – thrusche, in The Owl and the Nightingale.^[4][6]
• 1601 – sea-thrush, thrush-fish, a wrasse (obsolete by 1726).^[7]
• before 1705 – with qualifying words, other species of the family, in John Ray.^[7]
• 1938 – American slang, a woman singer.^[12] The OED's first record is from 1940.^[7]
• 1939 – American slang verb, to sing.^[12]

Meanings

Noun

1. Any of many small or medium songbirds of the family Turdidae, usually plain in colour and often with a spotted breast.^[3][13][11]
2. In particular, the song thrush of Europe, or the mistle thrush.^[7][11][13]
3. (US slang) A woman singer: The club hired a new thrush for the winter season.^[12][7]

Verb

1. (US slang) To sing.^[12]

Word family

• thrushlike

thrush² mouth or hoof infection

Etymology

The word for the infection is of uncertain origin,^[5][2][7] probably Scandinavian,^[3][5][9] and akin to Danish trøske and Swedish torsk.^[3][5][13] The American Heritage Dictionary allows either a medieval Scandinavian source or Old English *þrusc, and takes it as probably further akin to Old Irish trosc (“a kind of skin disease, leper”).^[14] The OED calls it of unknown origin: the sounds of the word point to English and to that same unrecorded Old English form, and the Scandinavian forms have been referred to Old Norse *þruskr by Falk and Torp.^[7] Norwegian frosk names the disease too and has the same form as the word for "frog", and Ancient Greek βάτραχος (bátrakhos, “frog”) and Latin rāna (“frog”) also named diseases of the mouth; from this Weekley suspected that an unrecorded frush was the original.^[15][7] The Oxford Dictionary of English takes the hoof sense as perhaps from that dialect word, which may in turn come from Old French fourchette (“frog of a horse's hoof”).^[16][11] Johnson derived the word from thrust,^[17] and Etymonline mentions a proposed connection with words for "thirst".^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

A disease of the mouth, in Pepys's diary for 17 June 1665: "He hath a fever, a thrush, and a hickup".^[9][7] Merriam-Webster Unabridged gives the same year,^[3] and Etymonline the 1660s.^[5]

Semantic evolution

Johnson (1755) described it as small round ulcerations that start in the mouth.^[17] The horse's disease, an inflammation of the frog of the hoof, is recorded from 1753, and the OED could not explain how it connects with the mouth disease, asking whether it might go with Danish trøske (“rotten or decayed wood”).^[7] In Yorkshire and Worcestershire dialect the word was used for the frog of the hoof itself, and for a tenderness of that part in Lancashire and Shropshire.^[18] Modern medicine traces the mouth disease to the fungus Candida albicans,^[3][13] and the name now also covers the same infection of the vagina.^[11][13]

Timeline

• 1665 – a disease of the mouth, chiefly of infants.^[7][9][3]
• 1753 – an inflammation of the frog of a horse's hoof.^[7][8]

Meanings

Noun

1. A fungal infection of the mouth and throat, especially in infants, with white patches on the tongue and inside the mouth; candidiasis.^[13][3][11]
2. The same infection of the genitals, especially the vagina.^[13][11]
3. An inflammation of the frog of a horse's hoof, with a foul discharge.^[7][11]