different. The Father of Holiness is the dependent of the Jew, and Rothschild is the real Pope and boss of all Europe.
1888. New York Herald, Jan. 12. Alderman Campbell—I move an amendment to make Hamline the general superintendent and chief boss of this whole gas business.
2. (popular.)—A short-sighted person; also one who squints. Cf., Boss-eyed and Boss, verb, sense 2.
3. (popular.)—A miss; a blunder. Cf., Boss, verb, sense 2.
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.
