English
bouquet
Bouquet comes from Proto-Germanic *buskaz ‘thicket, brushwood, small wood’, and perhaps goes back to Proto-Indo-European *bʰuH- ‘to swell, grow’.
- Proto-Indo-Europeanc. 4500–2500 BCE*bʰuH-1‘to swell, grow’uncertain
- Proto-Germanicc. 500 BCE–200 CE*buskaz2‘thicket, brushwood, small wood’reconstructed
- Englishearliest quotation 1874bouquet2
attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor
- 1 Wiktionary, Proto-Germanic *buskaz
- 2 Wiktionary, English bouquet
- Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1874, Thomas Pearce, The "Idstone" Papers: “These days were not concluded with the vast bouquet…”.
Lineage
- Proto-Indo-Europeanc. 4500–2500 BCE*bʰuH-Wiktionary, Proto-Germanic *buskaz‘to swell, grow’uncertain
- Proto-Germanicc. 500 BCE–200 CE*buskazWiktionary, English bouquet‘thicket, brushwood, small wood’reconstructed
- Englishearliest quotation 1874bouquetWiktionary, English bouquet. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1874, Thomas Pearce, The "Idstone" Papers: “These days were not concluded with the vast bouquet…”
Linked words
through Proto-Indo-European *bʰuH- ‘to swell, grow’
be, been, power, possible, future, present, build, physical, improve, presence, essential, absence, contribution, bond, physician, entity, approve, probability, absent, bound, booth, favorable, distribute, contributor, fiat, bun, favourable, attribution, imp, retribution, impotent, impossibility, aren, bower, beamer, phylogeny, physic, phylum, approbation, bist, 80 more
through Proto-Germanic *buskaz ‘thicket, brushwood, small wood’
Today it means
noun An arrangement or bunch of cut flowers; a nosegay.
Sources
Sources: Wiktionary, “bouquet”; the older steps come from the Wiktionary entry for Proto-Germanic *buskaz. By Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0, via kaikki.org (dump of Oct 3 2026); text adapted and restructured. Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word. License.
Etymograph / Proto-Indo-European *bʰuH- / bouquet