Word of the day: busk

The word of the day is busk:

apparently < obsolete French busquer ‘to shift, filch; prowle, catch by hook or crook; busquer fortune to go seek his fortune’ (Cotgrave), < Italian buscare ‘to filch, to prowl, to shift for’ (Florio), or Spanish buscar, Old Spanish boscar to seek; perhaps originally ‘to hunt’, or ‘to beat a wood’, < bosco wood.

Naut.

 1.a. intr. Of a ship: To beat or cruise about; to beat to windward, tack: with adv. about, to and again. Also to busk it out : to weather a storm by tacking about. 

b. ‘To cruise as a pirate’.  [Perhaps the original sense: compare Italian buscare, French busquer (above).] 

c. trans. to busk the seas : ? = to scour the seas.

2. fig. To go about seeking for, to seek after.

3.a. slang. See quots. (But perhaps this is a distinct word.) Now usu., to play music or entertain in the streets, etc.

b. trans. and intr. To improvise (jazz or similar music). Musicians' slang.  (OED)

"She worked as a waitress and busked in the East Village and sometimes rode the subway out to Queens to play at a bar called the Flushing Local."

 - Nick Paumgarten,  "The Musical Life: Lu in the afternoon", 4 April 2011 The New Yorker