Life in the Middle Ages was far from glamorous. For instance, it was common for a medieval England household to share the home with livestock, and leeches were a regular medical treatment. Humble holiday feasts often featured a main course of pheasant, which was hunted, not purchased at a grocery store like a Thanksgiving turkey is today. It’s from the hunting traditions of medieval England that we get one of the most enduring English idioms for linguistic evasion: “beating around the bush.”
You might have used this expression as a colorful way to tell someone to stop dodging the central issue. For example, if a co-worker offers only insignificant details about a meeting, you might say, “Quit beating around the bush! Tell me what they decided.” The phrase implies stalling or deliberately avoiding something, whether out of reluctance, fear, or even excitement.
Now a mainstay in modern metaphor, this idiom once referred to a literal activity in 15th-century England. Hunters would carefully “beat” bushes with long sticks, coaxing small animals out of hiding without frightening them. It required a delicate balance because harshly thrashing the bushes would send the game scattering, but gently agitating the perimeter would drive the animals into nets or traps. The practice of “beating the bushes” was integral to medieval hunting and trapping.
Over time, the phrase naturally transformed into a metaphorical expression for conversational evasion. Just as medieval hunters once skirted around bushes with sticks, modern raconteurs now dodge direct answers — sometimes receiving a playful nudge to “get to the point” from this idiom.
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