Bullace
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A small European plum (Prunus interstitia, syn. Prunus domestica subsp. insititia).
"If he ate bullace tart and bullace pie for a week, he would hardly empty the smallest of the baskets; and then they would begin to go bad. Nothing remained but to give them away, but to whom?"
- 2 small wild or half-domesticated Eurasian plum bearing small ovoid fruit in clusters wordnet
- 3 The bully tree.
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"If he ate bullace tart and bullace pie for a week, he would hardly empty the smallest of the baskets; and then they would begin to go bad. Nothing remained but to give them away, but to whom?"
Etymology
From Middle English bolas, bolace, from Anglo-Norman and Old French beloce, buloce (“sloe”), from Vulgar Latin *bullucea, from Late Latin bulluca (“kind of small fruit”); of Celtic/Gaulish origin, akin to Celtiberian *bullācā, from Proto-Celtic *bullākā, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *bʰeHw- (“to swell, puff”), itself imitative. Possibly influenced by Latin galla (“oak apple”) with metathesis of the consonants. See also Spanish bugalla (“oak apple”), Portuguese bugalho, and (the distantly related) Latin bucca.
Related phrases
More for "bullace"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.