Rushes

How to spell rushes

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce rushes

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does rushes mean?

1. verbMoves or acts with great urgency and speed.
2. nounTall slender plants that grow in wet ground, often used historically for weaving mats and chair seats.
3. nounThe first unedited prints of film footage, reviewed soon after shooting.

Rushes in a sentence

• verb

  Every morning she rushes to catch the early train.

• noun

  The riverbank was thick with green rushes swaying in the breeze.

• noun

  The director watched the day's rushes before approving the next scene.

• verb

  The courier always rushes the last delivery before closing time.

• noun

  Craftsmen once wove chair seats from dried rushes.

• noun

  Editors flagged a lighting problem in the morning rushes.

Where does rushes come from?

Language of origin: French

This single spelling actually carries two unrelated histories that happen to look alike. The verb 'rush', meaning to move with great speed, came into English in the 1300s from Anglo-French russher and Old French ruser, which meant to drive back or repel and was originally connected to forcing something away; over time the sense softened from 'push hard' to simply 'hurry'. The plant called a 'rush', a slender reed of wet ground, is a completely separate word descended from the Old English rysc or risc, a native Germanic term for the marsh plant once woven into mats and lamp wicks. The filming sense, the first unedited prints viewed quickly after a day's shooting, grew naturally out of the verb in the early twentieth century because the footage was processed in a hurry. Adding -es to either base produces the same written form, so the spelling 'rushes' simply follows the regular English rule of adding -es after the sh sound.

How the word is built

• rush (to move fast / a marsh plant)
• -es (plural or third-person verb suffix)