furze

From Middle English firse, furs, from Old English fyrs (“furze, gorse, bramble”), from Old English fyres (“furze”), related to Old English fȳr (“fire”); otherwise of unknown origin.

• IPA^(key): /fɜː(ɹ)z/
• Rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)z

furze (countable and uncountable, plural furzes)

1. A thorny evergreen shrub (Ulex europaeus), with yellow flowers, very common upon the plains and hills of Great Britain and Ireland.
   • 1908, W[illiam] B[lair] M[orton] Ferguson, chapter IV, in Zollenstein, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, OCLC 731476803:

     “My Continental prominence is improving,” I commented dryly. ¶ Von Lindowe cut at a furze bush with his silver-mounted rattan. ¶ “Quite so,” he said as dryly, his hand at his mustache. “I may say if your intentions were known your life would not be worth a curse.”

   • 1922, Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room, Vintage Classics, paperback edition, p.93:

     Clumps of withered grass stood out on the hill-top; the furze bushes were black, and now and then a black shiver crossed the snow as the wind drove flurries of frozen particles before it.

• gorse, whin

• dwarf furze (Ulex nanus)

• Ulex on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• IPA^(key): /fʊʁtsə/, [fʊɐ̯tsə]

furze

1. First-person singular present of furzen.
2. First-person singular subjunctive I of furzen.
3. Third-person singular subjunctive I of furzen.
4. Imperative singular of furzen.