Adj.—Pleasant; first rate; chief.
1884. Echo, March 3, p. 1, col. 4. The Americans are acknowledged
to be the boss artificers in wood.
1888. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 18. Take it all together, with
scarcity of food and little sleep, we had a hard but a boss time.
Verb.—1. To manage; direct; control.—See subs., sense 1.
1856. National Intelligencer, Nov. 3. The little fellow that bosses
it over the crowd.
1872. Athenæum, March 9. A child wishing to charge his sister with
being the aggressor in a quarrel for which he was punished,
exclaimed, ‘I did not boss the job; it was sister.’
1883. Saturday Review, April 28, p. 515, col. 1. It is long since
the more respectable inhabitants of America have been divided
between the convenience of the Irish as hewers of wood and drawers
of water, and as voters easily bossed or bribed on the one hand,
and the manifold nuisance of them on the other.
1885. Sporting Times, July 6. The Shah has fairly bossed everything
this week—he has been chief actor in our social system.
1888. Texas Siftings, July.
When lovely woman hires a servant
And bosses her around all day,
What makes the girl pray half so fervent
As her desire to run away.
2. (popular.)—To miss one’s aim; to make such a shot as a boss-eyed
(q.v.) person would be expected to make. Boss-shot is a common phrase.
1887. N. and Q., 7 S., iii., 236. To boss is schoolboy slang for
‘to miss.’
So also derivatives—bossing, acting as a boss; bossism, a system of
management or wire-pulling; bossy, pertaining to the qualities of a
leader.
Bossers, subs. (common).—Spectacles.—See Barnacles.
Boss-Eyed, adj. (common).—Said of a person with one eye, or rather with
one eye injured; a person with an obliquity of vision. In this sense
sometimes varied by squinny-eyed and swivel-eyed (q.v.). Also used as a
subs.—Boss-eye.
c. 1884. Broadside Ballad, ‘Put me some Jam Roll by, Jenny.’
Come where the waves roll high, Jenny,
Come where the waves roll high,
Jenny, old girl, I love you,
Come where the waves roll high.
Come where the waves roll high, Jenny,
Come where the sea-sick lie,
Come where we eat salt-junk, love,
Come with your old bos-eye.
French Synonyms. Borgniat; cligner des œillets (a military term, ‘to be
boss-eyed’); boiter des calots (‘to be boss-eyed’); calorgne.
Bostruchyzer, subs. (Oxford University).—A small kind of comb for
curling the whiskers.—Hotten. Obsolete.
Bot, Bott, Botts, subs. (common).—The colic; belly-ache; gripes.
Properly a name given to maggots found in the intestines of horses,
under the hides of oxen, and in the nostrils of sheep. A French
equivalent is la tourmente, i.e., ‘the torment.’
1787. Burns, Death and Dr. Hornbook, st. 27.
A countra Laird had ta’en the batts,
Or some curmurring in his guts.
1816. Scott, Old Mortality, ch. viii. ‘I ne’er gat ony gude by his
doctrine, as ye ca’t, but a sour fit o’ the batts wi’ sitting amang
the wet moss-hays for four hours at a yoking.
Botanical Excursion, subs. (old).—A thief’s circumlocution for
transportation—the allusion being to Botany Bay (q.v.).
Botany Bay, subs. (University).—1. At Oxford, Worcester College is so
designated on account of its remote situation as regards the bulk of
the collegiate buildings. It will be seen that a similar reason has
caused a certain portion of Trinity College, Dublin, to receive an
identical nickname. The general idea underlying the term is obviously
that to get to the places in question one has figuratively to go almost
as far as if transported to the real Botany Bay, formerly a convict
settlement in New South Wales.
1841. Lever, Charles O’Malley, ch. xx., note. Botany Bay was the
slang name given by college men to a new square rather remotely
situated from the remainder of the college [i.e., Trinity, Dublin].
1853. Rev. E. Bradley (‘Cuthbert Bede’), Adventures of Verdant
Green, I., p. 63. A name given to W. College, from its being the
most distant college.
2. (thieves’ and prison.)—Penal servitude. Formerly convicts
[1787–1867] were transported to Botany Bay, a convict settlement at the
Antipodes. Hence to go to Botany Bay was in popular use for a long term
of imprisonment.
Botany-Bay Fever, subs. (old).—Transportation; penal servitude.
Convicts condemned to transportation were said to have died of, or to
have Botany-Bay fever. Cf., Hempen fever for hanging.
Botch, subs. (old).—A tailor. [An abbreviated form of ‘botcher,’ which
has been used for a very long period in all the following senses—a
cobbler, tailor who does repairs, jobber, and an unskilful workman.]
Also called a Snip, which see for synonyms.
Bottle. To turn out no bottle, phr. (sporting).—Not to turnout well; to
fail.
Bottle-Ache, subs. (common).—Drunkenness; also applied to an attack of
delirium tremens. [From bottle, in allusion to drink causing
indisposition, + ache, a pain or sickness.] There are many curious
terms for this effect of intemperance, such as Jim-jams, barrel-fever,
quart-mania; but for full list of synonyms, see Gallon distemper.
Bottle-Arsed, adj. phr. (printers’).—Type thicker at one end than the
other—a result of wear and tear.