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beat the bushes

verb

Etymology

Both beat the bushes and scare up have figurative senses, referring to traversing the landscape seeking difficult-to-find things, that arose by extension from their senses referring to driving game out of the bush when hunting.

Definitions

  1. Synonym of pound the pavement (“to campaign diligently

    Synonym of pound the pavement (“to campaign diligently; to seek something”).

    • They started beating the bushes in search of a commercially available solvent that would aid their manufacturing but wouldn't be too horribly toxic and wouldn't cost an arm and a leg.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for beat the bushes. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA