different between boskiness vs bosky

English

Etymology

bosky +? -ness

Noun

boskiness (uncountable)

1. boscage
2. The state or quality of being bosky.

English

Etymology

From bosk +? -y.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /?b?ski/

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, in 2003, William G. Holzberger (editor), The Letters of George Santayana, Book Five, 1933-1936, 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", 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, Herman Melville, Moby Dick, chapter 5

     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

References

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

Anagrams

• kybos

Czech

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [?bosk?]

Adverb

bosky

1. barefoot, barefooted

Synonyms

• bos

Related terms

• bosý

Further reading

• bosky in P?íru?ní slovník jazyka ?eského, 1935–1957
• bosky in Slovník spisovného jazyka ?eského, 1960–1971, 1989