Words / B / General

burgeon

verb/ˈbəːdʒən/

C1CEFR level
50/100Rarity: uncommon
LiteraryRegister

To begin to grow or sprout rapidly and abundantly.

In April the bare hedges burgeon almost overnight into a haze of green.

Similar: sprout, flourish

Origin: from Old French borjon 'a bud'

Topic: growth in General English

Rarity runs from 0 (a word everyone knows) to 100 (almost never seen outside specialist or literary writing). Level is the word's real difficulty on the CEFR scale, from A1 to C2.

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More general words: growth