Learn English – the origin of the phrase “bush league”

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I know it's baseball terminology, but I've never heard anyone explain why a feeder or low-level league is associated with shrubs. Is there some relation in the phrase to "farm system"?

Best Answer

According to Etymonline,

"mean, petty, unprofessional," 1906, from baseball slang for the small-town baseball clubs below the minor league where talent was developed (by 1903), from bush (n.) in the slang sense of "rural, provincial," which originally was not a value judgment.

In other words, we're speaking not of bushes, but of the bush:

1) an uncultivated or sparsely settled area… 2) the countryside, as opposed to the city.

Americans do not commonly refer to rural areas as the bush these days (though Australians and South Africans do), but we do speak of the sticks, the boondocks, and the backcountry among others— "places" which are in the middle of nowhere, and as a result whose natives lack refinement in etiquette or skills.

Bush remains in baseball, but it seems only as a pejorative.

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