buxom
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈbʌksəm/
Forms: form: buxomer
form: more buxom
form: buxomest
form: most buxom
form: bucksome
Etymology: From Middle English buxom, also ibucsum, ibuhsum (“bendsome, flexible, pliant, obedient”), from Old English bōcsum, *būhsum, *ġebūhsum (“bendsome, pliant, obedient”), from Proto-West Germanic *beuhsam, *beugsam, equivalent to bow (“to bend, bow at the waist”) + -some or buck (“to bend, buckle, kick”) + -some.
Cognate with Scots bowsome (“compliant”), West Frisian bûgsum (“flexible, bendy”), Dutch buigzaam (“flexible, pliant”), German biegsam (“flexible, pliant”).
Senses: examples: text: Aarfy's buxom trollop had vanished with her smutty cameo ring, and Nurse Duckett was ashamed of him because he had refused to fly more combat missions and would cause a scandal.
ref: 1961 November 10, Joseph Heller, “The Eternal City”, in Catch-22 […], New York, N.Y.: Simon and Schuster, →OCLC, page 433:
text: DIED. Robert Brooks, 69, canny businessman who, as chairman of Hooters, turned the bar-restaurant chain, famed for buxom waitresses in orange hot pants, into an international success.
ref: 2003 July 23, “Milestones”, in Time, archived from the original on 23 Jun 2008:
synonyms: word: bosomy
word: big-breasted
word: busty
word: chesty
word: plump
word: round
word: shapely
word: full-throated
word: built
word: buxom
word: chubby
word: curvaceous
word: curvesome
word: curvy
word: embonpoint
word: full-figured
word: juicy
word: luscious
word: pneumatic
word: red-hot
word: Rubenesque
word: sonsy
word: thicc
word: thick
word: toothsome
word: voluptuous
word: well-endowed
word: well-proportioned
word: zaftig
glosses: Having a full, voluptuous figure, especially possessing large breasts.
raw_tags: of a woman
examples: text: There on Beds of Violets blew, / And freſh-blown Roſes waſht in dew, / Fill'd her with thee a daughter fair, / So buckſom, blith, and debonair.
ref: a. 1645, John Milton, “L’Allegro”, in Poems of Mr. John Milton, […], London: […] Ruth Raworth for Humphrey Mosely, […], published 1646, →OCLC, page 31:
text: Claypole, the buxom novelist,...[his] bubbling utterances....
ref: 1932, John Buchan, chapter IV, in The Gap in the Curtain:
text: So heated and impassioned, indeed, would they become, that the lady hardly felt herself safe in their company at such times, notwithstanding that she was a brave and buxom damsel, not easily put out, and with a daring spirit of humour in her composition.
ref: 1896, Thomas Hardy, “Dame the Eighth: The Lady Penelope”, in A Group of Noble Dames:
text: He had not seen Zilla since Paul had shot her, and he still pictured her as buxom, high-colored, lively, and a little blowsy.
ref: 1922, Sinclair Lewis, “26”, in Babbitt:
synonyms: gay
vigorous
glosses: Full of health, vigour, and good temper.
examples: text: Their substance is of a middle Nature betwixt bones and gristles moderately hard, the better to beare the violence of outward iniures, flexible or buxome that they should not breake but giue way to violence, pellucide or transparant and therefore they are either red or liuid according to their flesh vnder them.
ref: 1615, Helkiah Crooke, Mikrokosmographia:
synonyms: pliant
pliable
flexible
malleable
plastic
glosses: Physically flexible or unresisting.
examples: text: They downe him hold, and fast with cords do bynde, / Till they him force the buxome yoke to beare […].
ref: 1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, VI.8::
text: You will certainly be rewarded for this improvement in your conduct by a notable increase of tranquillity and cheerfulness in your view both of the past and of the future; and in the hope that you will be buxom and good, I conclude by New Year's lecture.
ref: 1869, Newell Connop Thirlwall, Letters:
synonyms: compliant
tractable
glosses: Morally pliant; obedient and easily yielding to pressure.
Derived terms: buxomly
buxomness
unbuxom