bushel [ME] If a bushel is a measure of capacity, how can you hide your light under a bushel? The answer is that the word here is used in an old sense, ‘a container used to measure out a bushel’. The origin of the phrase is biblical, from the Gospel of Matthew: ‘Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light to all that are in the house.’ The word entered English from French and may be Gaulish.