Bosh
intj, name, noun, verb, slang ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 Nonsense. British, uncountable
"Tho' hundreds cheer his blatant bosh, He's but a goose for a' that."
- 2 The lower part of a blast furnace, between the hearth and the stack.
- 3 A figure. British, Norfolk, archaic, slang
"to cut a bosh — "to make a figure""
- 4 A fiddle (musical instrument).
"My father broke his bosh one night when he was in Waterford."
- 5 pretentious or silly talk or writing wordnet
- 1 To consume (illicit drugs). UK, slang, transitive
"We boshed two grams each of the beast 10, and then we went downstairs."
- 1 An expression of disbelief or annoyance. British
""Bosh!" said the Vicar, rejecting the hint altogether."
- 2 An expression of speedy and satisfactory completion of a simple or straightforward task. British
"It's a ~3 foot double lead with two 5-pin DIN plugs on one end and a big gameport-sized-n-shaped plug on the other. One end into the gameport, t'other plugs into the back of your keyboard. Bosh, job done."
- 1 A surname rare
Example
More examples"Tho' hundreds cheer his blatant bosh, He's but a goose for a' that."
Etymology
Borrowed from Ottoman Turkish بوش (boş, “empty, unoccupied”). Entered popular usage in English from the novels of James Justinian Morier.
Probably from German, compare Böschung, böschen
Compare German Posse (“farce, burlesque”), Italian bozzo (“a rough stone”), bozzetto (“a rough sketch”).
An onomatopoeic formation, imitating a sudden blow.
Of Romani usage.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.