Bocage

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Bocage is a Norman word which has entered both the French and English languages. It perhaps derives from the antiquated French Boscage, a pleasant, small wood. The boscage form was used in English, for leafy decoration such as is found on eighteenth century porcelain. The more distant derivation might be from the old French word bosc, meaning wood (the landscape feature) but similar words appear in Scandinavian and other Germanic languages so leaving the suspicion that the apparent late Latin derivation comes ultimately from the Scandinavian language which became Norman French. The boscage form seems to have developed its meaning under the influence of eighteenth century romanticism.

The bocage form of the word came to English notice during the Second World War. It refers to a terrain of mixed woodland and pasture, with tortuous side-roads and lanes bounded on both sides by banks surmounted with high thick hedgerows which limit visibility. It is the sort of landscape found in England in Devon. In Normandy, it acquired a particular significance during the Battle of Normandy making progress against entrenched opposition extremely difficult. American soldiers also called this form of land management 'hedgerows'.

The 1934 Nouveau Petit Larousse defined bocage as 'a bosquet, a little wood, an agreeably shady wood' and a bosquet as a little wood, a clump of trees'. By 2006, the Petit Larousse definition had become '(Norman word) Region where the fields and meadows are enclosed by earth banks carrying hedges or rows of trees and where the habitation is generally dispersed in farms and hamlets.'

Bocage of the Boulonnais (Boulogne-sur-Mer region)

Bocage is also a type of rubble-work. This usage seems comparable with the English use of 'rustic' in relation to garden ornamentation.

It is also a 19th-century slang word for female pubic hair, comparable with a similar use of the word bush which word appears to have the same (perhaps Scandinavian) root.