Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (Aus./N.Z./US) one who lives far from urban ‘civilization’.

1809		W. Irving Knickerbocker (N.Y.) VI v (1849) 342: They were gallant bush-whackers and hunters of racoons by moon-light.
1843		R. Carlton New Purchase II 86: Do you, sir, [...] think all our eastern dignitaries combined, could have compelled young bushwhackers to wear coats and shoes in recitation rooms?
1844		Bradford Obs. 1 Aug. 7/3: A fellow-boarder thought her gown must have been made in ‘the year one’. [...] She heard their sly innuendoes about ‘bush-whackers’.
1873		Bruce Herald (Otago) 7 Mar. 7/4: The bushwhackers’ sturdy boys are fishing for perch and cod out of her stern sheets.
1876		Northern Terr. Times & Gaz. (Darwin) 8 Jan. 1/6[O]ur Protector [...] now half-amateur-detective, half trooper, with just a thought of the bush-whacker, returns with — Currant Billy: .
1882		N.Z. Observer (Auckland) 8 July 259/2: Any bushwhacker who is prepared to ‘pay his footing’ by ‘shouting’ for these sucking orators is welcomed to the charmed circle, and allowed to air his grievances.
1887		West Australian (Perth) 18 Mar. 3/2: I have a decided and natural objection to saddle either squatters or police with bush-whacker’s yarns, evolved out of their own imagination.
1900		Bulletin (Sydney) 20 Jan. 24/2: The bush humorist is in town. At Sydney Cricket Ground t’other day a big heavy bushwhacker in the ‘bob’ reserve asked a neighbor what the ‘green stuff the chaps was playin’ on’ was.
1909		‘O. Henry’ Roads of Destiny 269: Here’s the old bushwhacker and cowpuncher that your father has helped out of scrapes time and time again.
1917		‘Banjo’ Paterson ‘Three Elephant Power’ in Three Elephant Power 2: Henery was a bushwacker, but clean mad on motorin’.
1924		Lawrence & Skinner Boy in Bush 208: You’ll be a half-baked, quarter-educated bush-whacker, instead of a well-equipped man.
c.1930		(ref. to 1868) N. Kimball Amer. Madam (1981) 50: There was talk of [...] bushwackers that would kill and rape.
1930		L. Lower Here’s Luck 101: ‘I wasn’t goin’ to have these city blokes pickin’ me for a bushwhacker’.
1947		D. Davin For the Rest of Our Lives 344: The same way as bushwackers [...] looked forward to their yearly trip to town with the cheque.
1953		D. Cusack Caddie 36: I must have looked a regular bushwacker the day I stepped out of the train on to Central Station. What a fright!
1961		B. Crump Hang On a Minute, Mate (1963) 164: Some gate-crashing bush-whackers had picked on one of their blokes.
1971		A. Buzo The Roy Murphy Show (1973) 126: City to win by a country mile. The bushwackers have been weakened this year by the loss of Don ‘Chopper’ Pascoe.
1985		J. Sherwood Botanist at Bay 38: Us sex-starved bushwackers buried out here in the sticks have to make do with what we can get.
1996		Penguin Bk of More Aus. Jokes 438: A rugged old bushwhacker in a pub is scoffing at tales of present-day hardship.

2. attrib. use of sense 1.

1938		N. Lindsay Age Of Consent 150: Not a bad old stick, but no notion of doing things properly [...] Food dumped out on a bare kitchen-table. Real bushwhacker style.
2001		J. King White Trash 255: This isn’t fucking Peckham though, is it [...] None of your bushwhacker bollocks over here.

3. (orig. US) an ambusher, an attacker; a street robber.

1861		Dly Intelligencer (Wheeling, VA) 11 Dec. 3/1: The hunter may be mistaken for a bushwhacker [...] and shot down without ceremony.
1862		Macmillan’s Mag. (London) June 141: Of banditti, or bush-whackers, I need hardly say, we saw nothing.
1863		Hillsdale Standard (MI) 17 Nov. 1/5: ‘Yes — I’ve shot at soldiers [...] I’ve threatened people’ [...] These were his last words. The drop fell [...] The first hanging, by order of the military authorities, of a bushwhacker in Missouri.
1865		V.C. Giles Rags and Hope in Lasswell (1961) 278: Bushwhackers were almost as great a plague to the southern families as were the Yankees, on account of their pillaging.
1867		Kendal Mercury 9 Nov. 2/7: A noted desperado [...] is reported to have killed seventeen Union men [...] he managed to give his bad passions full sway in the capacity of bushwhacker.
1872		Schele De Vere Americanisms 90: Lawless persons and fugitives from Justice, taking to the bush, were designated by the convenient name of bushwhackers, and during the late Civil War the deserting soldier and the unauthorized raider gave to the term a new and formidable meaning. They would infest public roads, plunder defenceless houses, and even invade peaceful towns, to return laden with their booty to safe retreats in the bush.
1883		Edinburgh Eve. News 26 Mar. 3/3: The notorious ‘wild cat’ orator ‘Brick’ Pomeroy [...] stigamtises the whole movement as the work of bondholders by means of ‘a squad of thimble-riggers and bushwhackers’.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 7 Feb. 13/4: The missionaries put this undesirable state of affairs down to too much snake-juice, but the traders just as confidently assert that it’s due to too much Bible; particularly to those chapters which tell how the Israelitish bush-whackers used to pole-axe woman and babes, and gouge out the eyes of the helpless captive enemies.
1887		E. Custer Tenting on the Plains (rev. edn 1895) 165: Jayhawkers, bandits and bushwhackers had everything their own way for a time.
1893		K. Mackay Out Back 195: The Englishman turned [...] remarked, coolly enough— ‘Bai Jove! I do believe a bushwanger [sic] has come along. How very awkward.’.
1899		(con. US Civil War) Monroe City Democrat (MO) 14 Sept. 2/3: The Kansas jayhawkers pillaged and scared one day and the Missouri bushwackers came in the following day and they pillaged and scared [...] the former carried the union flag, the latter the confederate flag.
1900		Bulletin (Sydney) 22 Dec. 15/2: ‘When a lord or a bishop is killed,’ said the bushwhacker long ago, ‘it will be made the law of the overland that camel trains shall not camp right on the track.’.
1906		in B.L. Ridley Battles and Sketches of the Army of Tennessee (1906) 486: Champ Ferguson’s company of Confederate Bushwhackers could place a ball at any given point.
1927		H. Yenne ‘Prison Lingo’ AS II:6 280: We find among the prison population [...] ‘bushwhackers’ (thieves that steal purses on the street).
1931		O. Strange Law O’ The Lariat 56: His face was grim, and promised little mercy for the bushwhacker.
1940		O. Strange Sudden Takes the Trail 183: Squint holds that bushwackers should be heard an’ not seen.
1948		Range Riders Western May 109/1: Dusty Trail opened up with his .45–70 on the fast-shooting bushwhacker on the north bank [DA].
1950		Goldin et al. DAUL 37/2: Bushwacker. One who bushwhacks.
1966		H.S. Thompson Hell’s Angels (1967) 169: Had the bushwhackers not been taken into custody, the Angels would have insisted on revenge.
1978		R. Caron Go-Boy! 299: The bushwackers were everywhere, including the rooftops, with high powered rifles!
1986		C. Hiaasen Tourist Season (1987) 315: A procession of grafters, con artists [...] bushwackers, rustlers.
1999		Indep. Rev. 5 Nov. 11: A story about bushwhackers, a renegade band of paramilitaries who fought for the Confederate cause.

4. (Aus.) a bushranger.

1871		Brisbane Courier 2 Dec. 7/2: Now, the question is, whether this bushwhacker had a right, according to the agreement, to place the money in the bank to my credit, or to spend it on his own account?
1893		West Australian (Perth) 10 Mar. 2/2: [I] was forgetting - stages are not stuck up in this colony, I believe, and I apologise for the want of bushwhackers.