A lining or bearing, usually made of rubber or metal, that reduces friction between moving parts in machinery.
From 'bush' in its mechanical sense (a hollow cylindrical bearing) + '-ing' (noun suffix). The mechanical meaning emerged in the 19th century from industries using cylindrical sleeves to protect machinery.
Bushings are invisible heroes of engineering—without them, machines would grind themselves to destruction, and the word itself jumped from nature (bushes as plants) to technology, showing how English borrows and transforms meanings across domains.
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