bosky

English

WOTD – 10 August 2011

Etymology

From bosk +‎ -y.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈbɒski/

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

Adjective

bosky (comparative boskier, superlative boskiest)

1. Having abundant bushes, shrubs or trees.
   • 1886, David Masson, Sir George Grove, John Morley, Mowbray Morris, Macmillan's Magazine, volume 54, page 24:

     And the fields; they must have been a little more trackless and irregular, more bosky and tumbled, retaining a little more hill and dale, an irregularity which generation after generation of ploughing has nearly counteracted ; […] .

   • 1930, Samuel Eliot Morison, The Development of Harvard University Since the Inauguration of President Eliot, 1869-1929, page 345:

     Even in 1869 it had had more than half a century of development, and to judge from photographs must already have been a place of charm. Indeed, it seems to have had at that time more and finer trees than now, and to have been more bosky with scattered copses and masses of shrubbery.

   • c. 1936, George Santayana, edited by William G. Holzberger, The Letters of George Santayana, Book Five, 1933-1936, published 2003, page 425:

     The Harvard Yard is also darkened and made to seem far more bosky and umbrageous than it was.

   • 2018, Lauren Collins, “What Women Want”, in The New Yorker:

     We rambled around wet fields and bosky paths that smelled of jasmine.

2. Caused by trees or shrubs.
   • 1878, Henry James, The Europeans:

     It was open, and they looked down the road which was darkened over with long bosky shadows.

3. Bushy, bristling.
   • 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “chapter 5”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC:

     They were nearly all whalemen; chief mates, and second mates, and third mates, and sea carpenters, and sea coopers, and sea blacksmiths, and harpooneers, and ship keepers; a brown and brawny company, with bosky beards; an unshorn, shaggy set, all wearing monkey jackets for morning gowns.

4. (obsolete, slang) Drunk; inebriated.

Related terms

• boskiness
• boscage

Translations

having abundant bushes or trees

• Finnish: pensaikkoinen (bushes), metsäinen (fi) (trees), varvikkoinen (shrubs)
• Italian: boscoso (it) (trees), cespuglioso (bushes, shrubs)
• Russian: поро́сший ле́сом (porósšij lésom), поро́сший куста́рником (porósšij kustárnikom)
• Spanish: boscoso (es)

References

• (drunk): 1873, John Camden Hotten, The Slang Dictionary

Anagrams

• kybos

Czech

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [ˈboskɪ]

• Audio (Czech Republic):

  (file)

Adverb

bosky

1. barefoot, barefooted

   Synonym: bos

Related terms

• bosý

 

Further reading

• “bosky”, in Příruční slovník jazyka českého (in Czech), 1935–1957
• “bosky”, in Slovník spisovného jazyka českého (in Czech), 1960–1971, 1989