bud

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun Friend; chum. Used as a form of familiar address, especially for a man or boy.
• noun A small protuberance on a stem or branch, sometimes enclosed in protective scales and containing an undeveloped leaf, flower, or leafy shoot.
• noun The stage or condition of having buds.
• noun An asexual reproductive structure, as in yeast or a hydra, that consists of an outgrowth capable of developing into a new individual.
• noun A small, rounded organic part, such as a taste bud, that resembles a plant bud.
• noun One that is not yet fully developed.
• noun An earbud.
• intransitive verb To put forth or produce buds.
• intransitive verb To develop or grow from or as if from a bud.
• intransitive verb To be in an undeveloped stage or condition.
• intransitive verb To reproduce asexually by forming a bud.
• intransitive verb To cause to put forth buds.
• intransitive verb To graft a bud onto (a plant).

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun A gift, especially one meant as a bribe. Acts James I. (Jamieson.)
• noun A familiar term for brother.
• To ingraft a bud of or on, as of one plant on the stem of another: as, to bud a garden rose on a brier, or a brier with a garden rose. See budding, n., 3.
• To put forth by or as if by the natural process of budding.
• To put forth or produce buds; be in bud.
• To be in the condition of a bud; sprout; begin to grow or to issue from a stock in the manner of a bud, as a horn.
• Figuratively, to be in an early stage of development.
• To eat buds: said of birds.
• To endeavor to gain by gifts; bribe.
• Same as bood, preterit and past participle of behoove.
• noun In plants, the undeveloped germ-state of a stem or branch, consisting of a growing point inclosed by closely appressed rudimentary leaves.
• noun In architecture, an ornamental boss or button.
• noun The state of budding or putting forth buds: as, the trees are in bud.
• noun In some cryptogamous plants, especially some Hepaticæ, one of the bodies formed asexually which become detached and reproduce the plant; in the plural, same as gemmœ. See gemma.
• noun A prominence on or in certain animals of low organization, as polyps, which becomes developed into an independent individual, sometimes permanently attached to the parent organism, and sometimes becoming detached; an incipient zoöid, or bud-like beginning of a new individual in a compound animal. See cut under Campanularia.
• noun In zoology and anatomy, a part or organ like or likened to a bud: as, a tactile bud; a gustatory bud.
• noun A weaned calf of the first year.
• noun A young lady just “come out” in society.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• intransitive verb To put forth or produce buds, as a plant; to grow, as a bud does, into a flower or shoot.
• intransitive verb To begin to grow, or to issue from a stock in the manner of a bud, as a horn.
• intransitive verb To be like a bud in respect to youth and freshness, or growth and promise.
• noun (Bot.) A small protuberance on the stem or branches of a plant, containing the rudiments of future leaves, flowers, or stems; an undeveloped branch or flower.
• noun (Biol.) A small protuberance on certain low forms of animals and vegetables which develops into a new organism, either free or attached. See Hydra.
• noun (Zoöl.) a lepidopterous insect of several species, which destroys the buds of fruit trees; esp. Tmetocera ocellana and Eccopsis malana on the apple tree.
• transitive verb To graft, as a plant with another or into another, by inserting a bud from the one into an opening in the bark of the other, in order to raise, upon the budded stock, fruit different from that which it would naturally bear.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun A newly formed leaf or flower that has not yet unfolded.
• noun slang Potent cannabis taken from the flowering part of the plant (the bud), or marijuana generally.
• noun A small rounded body in the process of splitting from an organism, which may grow into a genetically identical new organism.
• noun A weaned calf in its first year, so called because the horns are then beginning to bud.
• verb To form buds.
• verb To reproduce by splitting off buds.
• noun informal Buddy, friend.
• noun informal used to address a male

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• verb develop buds
• noun a swelling on a plant stem consisting of overlapping immature leaves or petals