/ˈbʊz(ə)m/, /ˈbʌz(ə)m/
OriginFrom Middle English bosom, bosum, from Old English bōsm, from Proto-West Germanic *bōsm, from Proto-Germanic *bōsmaz, from Proto-Indo-European *bʰewH- (“to swell, bend, curve”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian Bossem, Bousem (“bosom”), West Frisian boezem (“bosom”), Dutch boezem (“bosom”), German Busen (“bosom”). Related also to Albanian buzë (“lip”), Greek βυζί (vyzí, “breast”), Romanian buză (“lip”), Irish bus (“lip”), and Latin bucca (“cheek”).
- datedThe breast or chest of a human (or sometimes of another animal).
“Serene, smiling, enigmatic, she faced him with no fear whatever showing in her dark eyes.[…]She put back a truant curl from her forehead where it had sought egress to the world, and looked him full in”
“Mary felt annoyed at the girl; just because bras had become passé, did a girl with so pronounced a bosom have to cater to fashion? In this case practicality dictated a bra, and Mary stood at the desk ”
- The seat of one's inner thoughts, feelings, etc.; one's secret feelings; desire.
“my poor dear duke[…], in consequence of the excitement created in his august bosom by her frantic violence and grief, had a fit in which I very nigh lost him.”
“His uncle, a Cardinal, engages a Spanish youth of Moorish descent called Diego, an expert singer and player on the virginal,[…]to cleanse his bosom of the perilous stuff, and cure him by the spell of ”
- The protected interior or inner part of something; the area enclosed as by an embrace.
“… Mr Toodle … was refreshing himself with tea in the bosom of his family.”
“there might be seen in districts far away among the lanes, or deep in the bosom of the hills, certain pallid undersized men, who, by the side of the brawny country-folk, looked like the remnants of a ”
- The part of a dress etc. covering the chest; a neckline.
“And he put his hand into his boſome: and when hee tooke it out, behold, his hand was leprous as ſnowe.”
“She was always in a fearful hurry, and the lower the bosom was cut the more it was to be gathered she was wanted elsewhere.”
- A breast, one of a woman's breasts
“I dont [sic] know that her bosoms were fuller than usual.”
“The prevailing look at Aintree was of a well-upholstered woman wearing an outfit about three sizes too small for her; trouser suits so tight you could not only tell if the lady had a coin in her pocke”
“The baby was crammed against one of her bosoms. He was meant to be sucking milk out of it. The other bosom was hanging down, with a funny long red blob on the end.”
- Any thing or place resembling the breast; a supporting surface; an inner recess; the interior.
“I observed, indeed, that the present war had filled the church with many of these uninhabited monuments, which had been erected to the memory of persons whose bodies were perhaps buried in the plains ”
“The appointed place was on the edge of a deep, rocky ravine, down in whose dark bosom brawled and foamed a little mountain torrent.”
- A depression round the eye of a millstone.
“The bosom of the mill-stone is a central depression, and the staff is adjustable to test the symmetry of the concavity.”
- not-comparableIn a very close relationship.
“bosom buddies”
“Lieut. Creecy of the navy, who has been detailed to the aerial experiments at the fort, and who was a bosom companion of young Selfridge, was brokenhearted.”
- To enclose or carry in the bosom; to keep with care; to take to heart; to cherish.
“Bosom up my counsel,
You’ll find it wholesome.”
- To conceal; to hide from view; to embosom.
“To happy Convents bosom’d deep in Vines,
Where slumber Abbots, purple as their Wines;”
“Those whom you feared most are now bosoming themselves in the queen's grace; and though her highness signified displeasure in outward sort, yet did she like the marrow of your book.”
“Beyond were the pines, and a rugged road, flint-edged, full of dips and rises, turns and twists, hovering on edges, or bosoming itself in deep rock-strewn cuts.”
- intransitiveTo belly; to billow, swell or bulge.
“Just above the recess the cliff bosomed out with a full swell for some two or three feet, effectually preventing any one’s looking down into the nest from above […]”
“1905, Alex Macdonald, In Search of El Dorado, London: T. Fisher Unwin, Part II, “The Five-Mile Rush,” p. 92,
What Stewart called a “langtailie coat” spread out behind him like streamers in a breeze, a”
- transitiveTo belly; to cause to billow, swell or bulge.
“1822, James Hogg, The Three Perils of Man, London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown, Volume 3, Chapter 12, pp. 440-441,
I looked again, and though I was sensible it must be a delusion brought on by ”
“1855, The Scald [pseudonym of George Smellie], “Sketches of a Voyage to Hudson’s Bay” in The Sea: Sketches of a Voyage to Hudson’s Bay, and Other Poems, London: Hope & Co., p. 45,
Thus one by one they”
Formsbosoms(plural) · bosome(alternative, obsolete) · bosoms(present, singular, third-person) · bosoming(participle, present) · bosomed(participle, past) · bosomed(past)