Other forms: ambushes
An ambush is a surprise attack from hiding. Lay an ambush, walked into an ambush, ambushed on the road.
Surprise is the whole of it, and the defence is not to be predictable — ambushes are laid where a route must pass. Figuratively, an ambush interview is one where the questions were not the ones agreed. Note that the word comes from a French verb meaning to hide in a wood, from a word for a bush.
1nounambushA surprise attack from hiding.
“The soldiers were caught in an ambush as they drove through the narrow valley.”
ambush is an attack.
Old French enbuscier means to hide in a wood, from a Frankish word for a bush. Bush and bouquet come from the same wood.
Old French
enbuscier
Middle English
enbuschen
English, today
ambush
From Middle English enbuschen, from Old French enbuscier, anbuchier (whence Middle French embusche), from Old French en- + Vulgar Latin boscus (“wood”) (whence also bouquet), from Frankish busk (“bush”), from Proto-Germanic buskaz (“bush, heavy stick”). Compare ambuscade. The change to am- from earlier forms in en- is unexplained. More at bush.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA