bosom
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈbʊz(ə)m/
ipa: /ˈbʌz(ə)m/
rhymes: -ʊzəm
rhymes: -ʌzəm
Forms: form: bosoms
form: bosoming
form: bosomed
form: bosomed
form: bosome
Etymology: From 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”).
Senses: examples: text: Bosom up my counsel,
You’ll find it wholesome.
ref: c. 1612, William Shakespeare, Henry VIII, Act I, Scene 1:
glosses: To enclose or carry in the bosom; to keep with care; to take to heart; to cherish.
examples: text: To happy Convents bosom’d deep in Vines,
Where slumber Abbots, purple as their Wines;
ref: 1741, Alexander Pope, The New Dunciad: As it was Found in the Year 1741, Dublin: George Faulkner, published 1742, Book IV, p 29, lines 291-292:
text: 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.
ref: 1818, Lucy Aikin, Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth:
text: 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.
ref: 1901, Stewart Edward White, The Claim Jumpers:
glosses: To conceal; to hide from view; to embosom.
examples: text: 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 […]
ref: 1869, Allan Hume, “My first Nests of Bonelli’s Eagle”, in The Ibis, Series 2, Volume 5, p. 145:
text: 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 “biled” collar had, in the same gentleman’s terse language, “burst its moorings” and projected in two miniature wings at the back of his ears, and a shirt that had once been white, bosomed out expansively through an open vest.
glosses: To belly; to billow, swell or bulge.
examples: 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 the stroke of his powerful rod, yet I did see the appearance of a glorious fleet of ships coming bounding along the surface of the firmament of air, while every mainsail was bosomed out like the side of a Highland mountain.
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 mount, and spreading wide,
The transverse wings extend on either side,
And, lightly bosomed by the gentle gale,
She seems a moving pyramid of ail.
glosses: To belly; to cause to billow, swell or bulge.