Other forms: buds, budding
A bud is the tight package a leaf or flower opens out of. Flower buds, in bud, the buds are swelling.
It contains the whole of what will unfold, folded very small and protected through the winter by scales. In bud is the gardener's phrase for a plant at that stage. To nip something in the bud means to stop it before it develops, which is exactly what removing a bud does. Note budding, meaning promising or beginning; and bud as an American form of address, short for buddy.
1nounbudThe tight package a leaf or flower opens out of.
“The roses are covered in buds that should open next week.”
2verbproduceTo produce buds, or to begin to develop.
“The roses are starting to bud, so they'll flower soon.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
bud is a plant part.
Middle English budde meant a bud or seed pod, from a Germanic root. The word has no clear relatives outside that family, which is unusual for something so ordinary.
Proto-Indo-European
*bʰew-
Proto-Germanic
*buzdǭ
Proto-West Germanic
*buʀdā
Old English
*budde
Middle English
budde
English, today
bud
Built from
From Middle English budde, bodde (“bud, seed pod”), from Old English budde, from Proto-West Germanic buʀdā, from Proto-Germanic buzdǭ (compare archaic German Butte (“rosehip”), Swedish dialect bodd (“head”)), perhaps from Proto-Indo-European bʰew-, bu- (“to swell”). Compare also German Low German Butte, Butt (“bud”), Dutch bot (“bud”), regional German Butz, Butzen (“seed pod; apple core”), German Low German Haagbutt "rosehip"; Haagbudden (“rosehips”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA