bud Meaning, Definition & Usage

  1. noun a partially opened flower
  2. noun a swelling on a plant stem consisting of overlapping immature leaves or petals
  3. verb develop buds
    • The hibiscus is budding!
  4. verb start to grow or develop
    • a budding friendship

WordNet

Bud noun
Etymology
OE. budde; cf. D. bot, G. butze, butz, the core of a fruit, bud, LG. butte in hagebutte, hainbutte, a hip of the dog-rose, or OF. boton, F. bouton, bud, button, OF. boter to bud, push; all akin to E. beat. See Button.
Definitions
  1. (Bot.) A small protuberance on the stem or branches of a plant, containing the rudiments of future leaves, flowers, or stems; an undeveloped branch or flower.
  2. (Biol.) A small protuberance on certain low forms of animals and vegetables which develops into a new organism, either free or attached. See Hydra.
Bud intransitive verb
Wordforms
imperfect & past participle Budded; present participle & verbal noun Budding
Definitions
  1. To put forth or produce buds, as a plant; to grow, as a bud does, into a flower or shoot.
  2. To begin to grow, or to issue from a stock in the manner of a bud, as a horn.
  3. To be like a bud in respect to youth and freshness, or growth and promise; as, a budding virgin. Shak. Syn. -- To sprout; germinate; blossom.
Bud transitive verb
Definitions
  1. To graft, as a plant with another or into another, by inserting a bud from the one into an opening in the bark of the other, in order to raise, upon the budded stock, fruit different from that which it would naturally bear.
    The apricot and the nectarine may be, and usually are, budded upon the peach; the plum and the peach are budded on each other. Farm. Dict.

Webster 1913