Blurred image of a man passing a train
One Word Sunday,  Plants,  Street photography,  Themed galleries

Gallery: in a rush

January 8, 2024 / 64 Comments

English can be a strange language. I know I would hate to have to learn it! The pronunciation of many of our words seems illogical and inconsistent (think of tough / bough / through / though / cough). And we have so many words with multiple meanings.

One of the latter is rush, which can be both verb and noun. The Cambridge dictionary define the verb as:

to (cause to) go or do something very quickly

The noun can mean something very similar. We can be ‘in a rush’ to do something, for instance. And if a lot of us rush for the same thing, the noun takes on particular significance, as in the Californian Gold Rush or the rush hour in many cities.

But then there’s the plant known as rush. What has that got to do with hurrying? Nothing, it just happens to share the same four letters in the same order!

For Debbie’s One Word Sunday theme, rush, I decided to include any and all meanings of the word in my choice of images.

Bullrushes lining the edge of a lake

Bullrushes, Druridge Bay nature reserve

Lake with dead reeds and distant stately home

Winter rushes, Osterley Park, west London

Bright green leaves and bullrushes

Rushes by Hatchet Pond, New Forest, Hampshire

Pools with rocks and slender rushes

Delicate rushes growing in the run off from Sólheimajökull, a glacier in South Iceland

Busy street with motorbikes and cars

Traffic in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam, where it’s always rush hour

Looking down at a bridge with cars, buses and pedestrians

Evening rush hour traffic on London Bridge, seen from the Shard

Three young women at night beside a road with passing traffic

Traffic rushes past young people enjoying a night out in Shinjuku, Tokyo

Blurred image of a woman passing a train

A rushing passenger on the New York subway

[actually it’s the train that is moving fast, but I panned the shot to freeze its motion and exaggerate hers]

Men crossing train tracks in a station as a train approaches

In Rajasthan, rushing to cross the tracks before a train comes

Group of women running around a track

Rushing around the track at the World Athletics championships in London, 2017

Cyclists on a race track

And cyclists rushing to win a race in the velodrome at the London Olympic,s 2012

Sepia photo of an old stagecoach

In Columbia, a former gold rush town in California

[an old slide given a vintage look in Nik Silver Efex Pro]

Road sign 'Speed thrills but kills'

And finally, a reminder from Kerala about the consequences of rushing!

64 Comments

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