Bossy
adj, noun, slang ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A cow or calf. US, dated, informal
"A week before, while riding the prairies, Raidler had come upon a sick and weakling calf deserted and bawling. Without dismounting he had reached and slung the distressed bossy across his saddle, and dropped it at the ranch for the boys to attend to."
- 1 Tending to give orders to others, especially when unwarranted; domineering.
"Over in the wardrobe department a bossy woman in ill-fitting dungarees tried to talk her into wearing a short red low-cut dress for the test."
- 2 Ornamented with bosses; studded.
- 1 offensively self-assured or given to exercising usually unwarranted power wordnet
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"You're being bossy, aren't you?"
Etymology
From boss + -y.
Diminutive of dialectal English boss + -y, as used in the term boss-calf (which, like buss-calf, is a variant form of boose-calf, a calf kept in a boose (“stall”)).
Related phrases
More for "bossy"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.