different between rhapsodize vs gush

English

Alternative forms

• rhapsodise (Commonwealth)

Etymology

rhapsody +? -ize.

Verb

rhapsodize (third-person singular simple present rhapsodizes, present participle rhapsodizing, simple past and past participle rhapsodized)

1. (intransitive) To speak with exaggerated or rapturous enthusiasm (about, (up)on or over something).

   Synonym: rave

   • 1814, Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, Chapter 22,^[1]

     The evergreen! How beautiful, how welcome, how wonderful the evergreen! […] You will think me rhapsodising; but when I am out of doors, especially when I am sitting out of doors, I am very apt to get into this sort of wondering strain.

   • 1900, Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men on the Bummel, Chapter 12,^[2]

     How can one rhapsodise over a view when surrounded by beer-stained tables? How lose one’s self in historical reverie amid the odour of roast veal and spinach?

   • 1929, Virginia Woolf, “Phases of Fiction” in Leonard Woolf (ed.), Granite and Rainbow: Essays by Virginia Woolf, New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1958, pp. 107-108,

     The Mysteries of Udolpho have been so much laughed at as the type of Gothic absurdity that it is difficult to come at the book with a fresh eye. We come, expecting to ridicule. Then, when we find beauty, as we do, we go to the other extreme and rhapsodize.

   • 2003, J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, New York: Scholastic, 2003, Chapter 9, p. 170,

     Ron was rhapsodizing about his new broom to anybody who would listen.

2. (transitive) To say (something) with exaggerated or rapturous enthusiasm.
   • 1896, Abraham Cahan, Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto, New York: Appleton, Chapter 5,^[3]

     “It’s a long time since I tasted such a borshtch! Simply a vivifier! It melts in every limb!”" he kept rhapsodizing, between mouthfuls. “It ought to be sent to the Chicago Exposition. The missess would get a medal.”

   • 1923, Crosbie Garstin, The Owl’s House, New York: A.L. Burt, Chapter 22,^[4]

     “Listen, my pearl,” he rhapsodized. “I have money now and you shall have dresses like rainbows, a gold tiara and slave girls to wait on you […] ”

3. (transitive) To recount or describe (something) as a rhapsody, or in the manner of a rhapsody.
   • 1762, Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, London: T. Becket and P.A. Dehondt, Volume 6, Chapter 21, p. 90,^[5]

     The campaigns themselves will take up as many books; and therefore I apprehend it would be hanging too great a weight of one kind of matter in so flimsy a performance as this, to rhapsodize them, as I once intended, into the body of the work […]

   • 1982, Seamus Heaney, “Joyce’s Poetry” in Finders Keepers: Selected Prose, 1971-2001, New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2002, p. 423,^[6]

     The great poetry of the opening chapter of Ulysses […] amplifies and rhapsodizes the world with an unlooked-for accuracy and transport.

4. (intransitive) To perform a rhapsody.
   • 1824, Lady Morgan, The Life and Times of Salvator Rosa, London: Henry Colburn, Volume 2, Chapter 8, p. 33, footnote,^[7]

     […] Carolan, the last of the Irish bards, rhapsodized in the halls of the O’Connors so lately as the year 1730.

   • 1911, Stephen Leacock, “The Passing of the Poet” in Literary Lapses, London: John Lane, p. 187,^[8]

     Should one gather statistics of the enormous production of poetry some sixty or seventy years ago, they would scarcely appear credible. Journals and magazines teemed with it. Editors openly countenanced it. Even the daily press affected it. Love sighed in home-made stanzas. Patriotism rhapsodized on the hustings, or cited rolling hexameters to an enraptured legislature.

Anagrams

• aphidozers

English

Etymology

From Middle English guschen, gusshen, gosshien, perhaps from Middle Dutch guysen (“to flow out with a gurgling sound, gush”) or Old Norse gusa (“to gush”), ultimately imitative.

Compare Old Norse geysa (“to gush”), German gießen (“to pour”), Old English ??otan ("to pour"; > English yote). Related to gust.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /????/
• Rhymes: -??

Noun

gush (plural gushes)

1. A sudden rapid outflow.
   • 1990, Stephen King, The Moving Finger

     There was a cartoon woman in an apron on the front. She stood with one hand on her hip while she used the other hand to pour a gush of drain-cleaner into something that was either an industrial sink or Orson Welles's bidet.

Translations

Verb

gush (third-person singular simple present gushes, present participle gushing, simple past and past participle gushed)

1. (intransitive, also figuratively) To flow forth suddenly, in great volume.
2. (transitive, also figuratively) To send (something) flowing forth suddenly in great volume.
   • 1993, Brian Lumley, Blood Brothers, Macmillan (?ISBN), page 119:

     The other was no longer capable of controlling his anger; his parasite creature amplified his passion by ten; his jaws cracked open and his great mouth gushed blood from torn gums as teeth grew out of them like bone sickles.

   • 2001, Larry L. Miller, Tennessee Place-names, Indiana University Press (?ISBN), page 196:

     A beautiful spring gushed water from the ground in this mountainous sector of Polk County, inspiring the name of the place.

3. (intransitive, especially of a woman) To ejaculate during orgasm.
   • 2008, Anya Bast, The Chosen Sin, Penguin (?ISBN), page 154:

     Her orgasm exploded over her, making her writhe and cry out his name. She gushed over his hand, her cunt gripping and releasing his invading fingers.

   • 2009, Emma Holly, Kissing Midnight, Penguin (?ISBN):

     Somehow, this made his ejaculations all the more exciting, sending hot tingles streaking through her as he gushed.

   • 2014, Stewart N. Johnson, Parthian Stranger 2 Conspiracy, Trafford Publishing (?ISBN):

     […] she pulled off an amazing orgasm, one after another, she gushed with force, […]

   • 2017, Cara McKinnon, Memories of Magic, Stars and Stone Books (?ISBN):

     Odd. She'd never managed to do that to herself before—to climax so hard she gushed. Sometimes her sex partners didn't satisfy her as well as she could on her own, but her most intense orgasms had always been with others.

4. (intransitive, transitive, figuratively) To make an excessive display of enthusiasm, praise, or sentiment.
   • 1911, Thompson Buchanan, Making People Happy, page 14:

     Miss Johnson gushed approval with her usual air of coquettish superiority.

   • 2010, Pat Williams, Jim Denney, How to Be Like Walt: Capturing the Disney Magic Every Day of Your Life, Simon and Schuster (?ISBN):

     Randy Thornton, a producer with Walt Disney Records, put it this way: “Walt was not a man who gushed praise. His biggest words of approval were, 'That'll work.'

   • 2017, Judson G. Everitt, Lesson Plans: The Institutional Demands of Becoming a Teacher, Rutgers University Press (?ISBN):

     Nellie routinely gushed praise to students for good performance whereas Frank was much more sparing in praising students.

Translations

References

• Oxford English Dictionary, 1884–1928, and First Supplement, 1933.

Anagrams

• Shug, hugs, shug

Albanian

Etymology

From Proto-Albanian *gunša, close to Lithuanian gùžas (“knag”), Old Norse kjuka (“ankle”) and Old Church Slavonic gust? (gust?, “thick, dense”).

Noun

gush f (definite singular gusha)

1. neck, Adam's apple

Related terms

• gungë
• kungull