tussock

English edit

WOTD – 13 December 2009

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”).

tussock (plural tussocks)

A tuft or clump of green grass or similar verdure, forming a small hillock.
- 1894 May, Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book, London, New York, N.Y.: Macmillan and Co., published June 1894, →OCLC:
  An Indian grazing ground is all rocks and scrub and tussocks and little ravines, among which the herds scatter and disappear.
- 1895, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, The Stark Munro Letters: […], London: Longmans, Green, and Co., →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.

tuft or clump of grass or verdure