hurst

From Middle English hirst (“wood, grove; hillock; sandbank, sandbar”), from Old English hyrst (“hillock, eminence, height, wood, wooded eminence”), from Proto-Germanic *hurstiz; akin to Dutch horst (“thicket; bird's nest”), German Horst (“thicket, nest”).

• Rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)st

hurst (plural hursts)

1. (rare outside placenames) A wood or grove.
   • 2000, Grazing Ecology and Forest History →ISBN, page 150:

     A blackthorn seedling can in this way expand into a hurst of 0,1-0, 5 ha in the space of 10 years, […]

   • 2010, Adam Nicolson, Sissinghurst: A Castle's Unfinished History, page 124:

     A recognizable world seems to balloon up out of the names [...]. Lovehurst down in the clay lands towards Staplehurst means "the hurst that was left to someone in a will": Legacy Wood. Its near neighbor, Tolehurst, originally called Tunlafahirst, means something like Heir's Farm Wood.

• Stuhr, Thurs, hurts