*** Welcome to piglix ***

Bocage


Bocage (/ˈbkɔːʒ/ BOH-kawzh) is a terrain of mixed woodland and pasture.

Bocage is a Norman word that comes from the Old Norman boscage (Anglo-Norman boscage, Old French boschage), from the Old French root bosc ("wood") > Modern French bois ("wood") cf. Medieval Latin boscus (first mentioned in 704 AD). The Norman place names retain it as Bosc-, -bosc, Bosc-, pronounced traditionally [bɔk] or [bo]. The suffix -age means "a general thing". The boscage form was used in English for leafy decoration such as is found on eighteenth-century porcelain. Similar words occur in Scandinavian (cf. Swedish buskage) and other Germanic languages (cf. Dutch bos, boshaag); the original root is thought to be the Proto-Germanic *bŏsk-. The boscage form seems to have developed its meaning under the influence of eighteenth-century romanticism.

In English bocage refers to a terrain of mixed woodland and pasture, with fields and winding country lanes sunken between narrow low ridges and banks surmounted by tall thick hedgerows that break the wind but also limit visibility. It is the sort of landscape found in England in Devon.

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.'


...
Wikipedia

...