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Bosh   Listen
noun
Bosh  n.  Empty talk; contemptible nonsense; trash; humbug. (Colloq.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Bosh" Quotes from Famous Books



... both parties will nail anti-trust planks in their platforms. But this talk is all bosh with both parties. Neither one is honest in its cry against trusts. The one making the more noise in this direction may get the votes of some unthinking persons, but every one who is capable of reading and digesting what ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... 'Bosh!' and 'Humph!' but he couldn't help actin' interested, particular as Mrs. Bassett kept him alongside of the machine and was so turrible interested herself. And when, this partic'lar afternoon, Henry G. invites us all to go out with him for a little 'roll around,' the widow was ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln

... the Russian! Bosh! How long has he been here—this is the third day!" The room rang with ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry

... to live like a Christian, by conceding to his wife all this latitude of indulgence; and he meant to go through it like a man and a philosopher. To be sure, in his eyes, it was all so much unutterable bosh and nonsense; and bosh and nonsense for which he was eventually to settle the bills: but he armed himself with the patient reflection that all things have their end in time,—that fireworks and Chinese lanterns, bands of music and kid gloves, ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... one moment, in the middle of all the nonsense, that I was to die on Thursday three weeks! die on Thursday three weeks! die on Thursday! That's the way the time runs in my ears like a chime of bells. But it's all mere bosh I've been reading these long six months I've been chained up here—after I was committed for trial. When I came out of the hospital after curing me of that wound—for I was hit bad by that black tracker—they gave me some books to read for fear I'd go mad and cheat ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood

... Third Drop—"Bosh and nonsense. There is no ocean. It is all superstition. Before we were born here, from the mist, what were we? When we evaporate in a few minutes what becomes of us? You two drops make me feel sorry for you. I know that when I cease reflecting that white cloud ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane

... "Bosh and nonsense!" he exclaimed impatiently. "It is the desire that decides. Here is a man who wants to, say, get drunk. Also, he doesn't want to get drunk. What does he do? How does he do it? He is a puppet. He is the creature of his desires, and of the two desires he obeys ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London

... "Bosh! That view is as extinct as the post-chaise and the packet-ship—it belongs to the time when people read books. Nobody does that now; the reviewer was the first to set the example, and the public were only too thankful to follow it. At first they read the reviews; ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... "Bosh!" the girl interrupted. "It won't take one of the boys five minutes to bring you the message if it comes while you're gone." She came closer and placed a hand on his arm. "Please come," she ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton

... 1, 2, 3 and 4, form one complete plant, with stacks seventy-five feet high, sixteen feet diameter of bosh. Steam is generated in forty boilers, fired by furnace gas, for eight vertical direct-acting blowing engines. Nos. 5 and 6 blast furnaces form together a second plant with stacks seventy-five feet high, nineteen feet diameter of bosh. No. 5 has ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... "Bosh!" cried Bob, who did not believe much in sentiment, 'flummery' he termed it. "Much more likely he's an old cart-horse, and is as well accustomed to the row of the railroad as he is to the plough, and that's the reason he took no notice of us as we dashed by. See, he's only a little ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson

... a thing to make a fuss about!' said Lukashka, evidently thinking of something else. 'What bosh! If he made us turn out of the village at night now, that would be annoying: there one can have some fun, but here what is there? It's all one whether we're in the cordon or in ambush. What a ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy

... "Bosh!" exclaimed Stevens. "I'd rather trust a woman than a man, any day, with a secret, business or personal. That goes for any woman; mother, sister, sweetheart, wife, daughter, or stenographer. Just give them a chance to get interested in your game, and they're ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester

... ask me, Is it worthless, Is it bosh and is it bunkum, Merely facile flowing nonsense, Easy to a practiced rhythmist, Fit to charm a private circle, But not worth the print and paper David Bogue hath here expended? I should answer, I should tell you, You're a fool and most presumptuous. ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... out that kind of talk. I know enough about the Bible to know they are mighty scarce. I'd go to Jerusalem on foot to see a real one. Where's the folks, I'd like to know, that live up to half of the things it says in the Bible? Why, they even say it can't be done, and that's why it seems all bosh to me. What was the use of putting it in there if it ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden

... a fashionable cove:' he was always 'a gadding about, mostly to Liverpool and Birmingham, and sometimes to Lunnun, itself.' He was 'keeping company one time with Beauty, Governor thought, and he was awfully afraid he'd a married her; but that was all bosh and nonsense; and Beauty would have none of his chaff and wheedling, for she liked Tom Brice;' and Milly thought that Dudley never 'cared a crack of a whip for her.' He used to go to the Windmill to have 'a smoke with Pegtop;' and he was a member of the Feltram Club, ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu

... forget you, Mrs Askerton; I didn't, indeed. And as for the special day, that's all bosh, you know. I haven't taken particular possession of anything that ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope

... your voice is, Sybil! Bosh! who cares for such double-dealing wretches, who flatter us before our faces and abuse us behind our backs?" exclaimed Beatrix, as she quickly finished her Puritan toilet, and announced ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... can fortify ourselves with another maxim, that "Principle is not limited by Precedent." When we spread the wings of thought and speculate as to future possibilities, our conventionally-minded friends may say we are talking bosh; but if you ask them why they say so, they can only reply that the past experience of the whole human race is against you. They do not speak like this in the matter of flying-machines or carriages that go ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward

... my things under me, and pretend I don't mind. They work out again though, particularly when they are starched, and I think frocks get shorter every time they go to the wash; But I don't complain; if it's very uncomfortable, I make an ugly face to myself, and say, "Bosh!" We've all of us had a good deal of practice, so we ought to know how to ride; We've ridden a great deal since we came to live on the Heath, and we rode a good deal when Father was stationed at the sea-side. My Major taught me to ride sideways, and at ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... Mr. Bingle, arising hastily. "Let it be bosh and ridiculous, just as you like. I would have been willing to take this small amount, just as I have said, and, what's more, I might have been willing to divide the estate into four equal parts—if Mr. ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon

... for the pipe-makers, give my compliments to the autocrats, and tell them it is a shame. The Vegetarians would have quite as much right to refuse the Butchers, because, forsooth, theirs is now discovered not to be a necessary trade. Bosh! The question is this—If association be a great Divine law and duty, the realization of the Church idea, no man has a right to refuse any body of men, into whose heart God has put it to come and associate. It may be answered that these men's motives are self-interested. ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... to transfer his words to paper. I feel my weakness and the strength of others who in my day have shown a singular power of fixing on paper the volatile particles of frenzy; however, in a word, the poor thief was talking as our poetasters write, and amid his gunpowder, daffodils, bosh and other constellations there mingled gleams of sense and feeling that would have made you and ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... I can believe, I want you to know. Georgian may have drowned herself. That is credible enough. But that the girl we read about in the papers and whom she evidently induced to come to this place with her should be the dead girl we called Anitra—why, that is all bosh—a tale to deceive the public, and possibly you, but not one to deceive me. The coincidence is ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green

... settlement, and meanwhile they could be kicked out of their holdings at one day's notice. The people who bought under Ashbourne's Act are happy, prosperous, and contented. The people who are beside them are the contrary. Home Rulers, bosh! Farmers know as much about Home Rule as a pig knows about the Sabbath Day. The land, the land, the land! Let the Tories take this up and dish the Liberals. Easiest thing alive. How? Compulsory sale, compulsory purchase. Leave nothing to either party. Then you'll ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... in for it. I must go on chasing them, until I marry, then I am done with literature and all other bosh—that is, literature wherewith to please the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... course it's bosh. The doctors must invent something, or else what are they paid for? There's one comes to us every day. Comes,— talks ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al

... sort of dream, where "nothing is but what is not"—a loneliness in the very midst of a constant crowd, as it were—is not a desirable condition of existence, especially when the body also has to share the "penalty of greatness," as it is termed. Bosh! I'd sooner be an obscure farmer, a hayseed from Wayback, or a cabinetmaker, as my father advised, than the most distinguished man on earth. But Nature cast me for the part she found me best fitted for, and ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles

... into Latin after the Manner of the Animals of Tacitus: She went into the garden to cut a cabbage to make an apple-pie. Just then a great she-bear, coming down the street, poked its nose into the shop window. 'What! No soap? Bosh!' So he died, and she (very imprudently) married the barber. And there were present at the wedding the Joblillies, and the Piccannies, and the Gobelites, and the great Panjandrum himself, with the little button on top. So they all set to playing catch-who-catch-can, ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.

... "That's all bosh!" exclaimed Bud. "There's as much water for Hank Fisher as he ever had at Double Z. Besides, this isn't his way of doing business. He's as mean as they make 'em, but he'll come out in the open and tell you what he thinks ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Camp - or The Water Fight at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker

... our authors turn out to be chiefly composed of very old-fashioned rays of darkness, and, after a careful perusal, many will come to the conclusion that the way to be a modern philosopher, is to quote the ancients, praise Bacon, and talk 'bosh.'" ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... The editor says that the unities are altogether thrown over now, and that they are regular bosh—our game is to stick in a good bit whenever we can get it—I got to be so fond of Adelgitha that I rather think she's ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... as he had begun, the doctor stopped, and he laughed a little unnaturally. "Bosh!" he exclaimed. "Let's see that head of yours, Steele. Speaking of pains and pricks reminds me that, being a surgeon, I may be of ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood

... Chinese underbid the whites in the labor market is bosh. When they first come over, and are ignorant of our language, habits, customs, and manner of work, they no doubt work cheaply; but they know very accurately the current rate of wages and the condition of the labor market, ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff

... colored ribbons to my left. 'The Graduates,' Bell whispered, and the business of the day began. There were eight in all to read essays—nice looking girls, and much like the Lasells and Wellesleys we used to know. As for the essays—well, there was either a good deal of bosh in them, or a profundity of learning and thought to which Jack Harcourt never attained. But the people cheered like mad whenever one was ended, and sent up flowers, while I grew hotter and hotter, and when the seventh went up, and unfolded the 'Age of Progress ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes

... wrong-at least I can't see what it has to do with God, and Christianity, and all which, if it is true, must be more important than anything else. I have tired of art for the same reason. How can I be anything but a wretched dilettante, when I have no principles to ground my criticism on, beyond bosh about 'The Beautiful'? I did pluck up heart and read Mr. Ruskin's books greedily when they came out, because I heard he was a good Christian. But I fell upon a little tract of his, 'Notes on Sheepfolds,' and gave him up again, ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley

... wireless, are a good deal done and are quite nice and restful, the general atmosphere (if someone tainted with banalism seems inclined to speak) being, "I know what you're going to say. Please—please—please don't say it!" On a little dinner of this kind at Bosh and Wee-Wee's last week there descended a terrible man, a far-away cousin of Wee-Wee's, who hardly ever leaves his terres in some remote part of the country—the sort of creature, you know, dearest, who always has ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various

... boy has talent, but is on the wrong road, for he makes bosh of great works which he does not understand, and to which he is utterly unequal. I could make something of him if you could hand him over to me for three years, and follow out my plan to the letter. The first year he must play nothing but Mozart, the second Clementi, and the third Bach; but ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris

... "Bosh! Bosh! Bosh! Me to play, is it?" Down he went, and not finding a good open for a hazard, again waxed himself to the cushion, to the infinite disgust of Griggs, who did indeed hit the ball this time, but in such a way as to make the loss of another life from Griggs's original three ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope

... of bothering! Rubbish!" cried George, with rude jollity. "You know as well as I do, Mr. Ingram, it's all bosh! Things will go on as they're doing, and as they have been doing, till now from all eternity—so far as we know, and that's enough for us." "They will not go on so for long in our sight, Mr. Crawford. The worms will have a word to ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald

... Subscribers who write in to say that the current number is the worst magazine printed since the days of the New York Galaxy; and from elderly poetesses who have read all the popular text-books of sex hygiene, and believe all the bosh in them about the white slave trade, and so suspect the editor, and even the publisher, of sinister designs; and from stories in which a rising young district attorney gets the dead wood upon a burly political boss named Terrence O'Flaherty, ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken

... "Bosh! She's shamming. She's afraid to show her wicked, plotting face. She's lying there to concoct some new villainy. I won't spare her—she didn't spare you. I'll send her packing, bag and baggage, before ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming

... "Bosh!" exclaimed the General. "That's all been exploded long ago. Now, we're going to cut out the usual gang of porters and chiefs. I guess we can get along from village to village well enough. Bring those traps and ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney

... the desk violently with his clenched fist. "Bosh! You're hipped on this heredity subject. Crazy! Why, you doddering old fool—" With an effort he calmed himself, realizing that he had shouted his last words. He turned away and made a circuit of the room before returning to face his friend. "I didn't mean to speak to you like that, Judge. You pulled ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach

... refused him as coolly as she would have declined a second plate of soup. There must be some truth, after all, in the rant of the poets about the heartlessness and fickleness of women, although he had always been used to consider it the merest bosh. Suddenly he heard the train moving. He was perhaps fifty yards off, and, grumbling anathemas at the stupidity of the conductor, started to run for the last car. He was not quite desperate enough to fancy being left alone on the Nevada desert with night coming on. He would have caught the train ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... "Bosh!" growls de Vere, "as if anybody couldn't gallop about from the shed to the washpen, and carry messages, and give half of them wrong! Why, Mr Gordon said the other day, he should have to take you off and put on a Chinaman—that he couldn't ...
— Shearing in the Riverina, New South Wales • Rolf Boldrewood

... Then change about. Ponder them well, and while we walk to the Museum later, tell me their errors. Then I will show you the preserved ears of the first man found in Boshland by P. T. Barnum, jr.' Oh, bosh," said Mae suddenly, letting fly her streamers, "what a dry set of locusts you nineteenth century leaders are. You are devouring our green land, and some of us butterflies would like to turn our yellow wings into solid shields against you, if ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason

... war-correspondence, and of course nobody but old maids reads that. There is a fellow who writes for the 'Daily——,' and signs himself 'Wabash.' Well, what of it? Nothing; only some people think it ought to be spelt, 'War bosh.' ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... birth and life appear to them to be like that of the Rommany. There is a collection of a number of words now current in vulgar English which were probably derived from Gipsy, such as row, shindy, pal, trash, bosh, and niggling, and finally a number of Gudli or short stories. These Gudli have been regarded by my literary friends as interesting and curious, since they are nearly all specimens of a form of original narrative occupying a middle ground between the anecdote and fable, ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland

... "Bosh!" said Fletcher,—"Bullion is in there for fifty thousand, to be sure; but what is that? He has other property ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... 'Bosh! there's another two days yet before we must have the books back, and, at any rate, I know ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... "All bosh. At your age men cling to the ideal, and resolutely close their eyes to the true and rational. I was guilty of ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie

... Preferring personal government, with its tact and flexibility, is called Royalism. Preferring impersonal government, with its dogmas and definitions, is called Republicanism. Objecting broadmindedly both to kings and creeds is called Bosh; at least, I know no more philosophic word for it. You can be guided by the shrewdness or presence of mind of one ruler, or by the equality and ascertained justice of one rule; but you must have one or the other, or you are not a nation, but a nasty mess. Now men in their aspect ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton

... disbelieving things 'on principle,' as I have found many idiots prone to be, and what is more, some of them not ashamed to boast of the insane fact. I view all reported 'hauntings' as unproven until I have examined into them, and I am bound to admit that ninety-nine cases in a hundred turn out to be sheer bosh and fancy. But the hundredth! Well, if it were not for the hundredth, I should have few ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson

... in the following communications from our valued and learned contributor, Prof. Bosh, whose labors in the fields of culinary and botanical science are so well known to all the world. The first three articles richly merit to be added to the domestic cookery of every family: those which ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear

... "Bosh, Tom, none o' your flummery," said he, grinning as he always does at the mention of the Egyptian affair which they made such a fuss about, just when I was a little nipper learning to run about, and that old men- o'-warsmen thought all the more ridiculous from its contrast to Admiral Hornby's rushing ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson

... wrong," says the man of millions, "It is this way——". As a connoisseur he seems to think that because he can pay for anything he fancies, he is accredited expert as well as potential owner. Topics he does not care for are "bosh," those which he has a smattering of, he simply appropriates; his prejudices are, in his opinion, expert criticism; his taste impeccable; his judgment infallible; and to him the world is a pleasance built for his sole pleasuring. But to the rest of us who also have to live in it with as much harmony ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... "Good Lord! is this street serious? Are these damned Chinese lanterns serious? Is the whole caboodle serious? One comes here and talks a pack of bosh, and perhaps some sense as well, but I should think very little of a man who didn't keep something in the background of his life that was more serious than all this talking—something more serious, whether it was religion ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton

... him; he could go or come as he pleased. He was very talkative, far more so than suited my humor, as we went on. "One thing is certain, you know; there must be some human agency," he said. "It is all bosh about apparitions. I never have investigated the laws of sound to any great extent, and there's a great deal in ventriloquism that we don't know much about." "If it's the same to you," I said, "I wish you'd keep all that to yourself, Simson. It doesn't suit my state of mind." "Oh, I hope ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant

... and that hawker," and Paul related what Sylvia had said about Thuggism. Hurd sat down and stared. "That must be bosh," he said, looking at the novel, "and yet it's mighty queer. I say," he took the three volumes, "will you ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume

... Oh, that's all bosh. Those newspaper fellows got hold of it for the Silly Season and ran it to death, but it's the best possible place in the world. No end of good training for a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, Jan. 2, 1892 • Various

... a word of it. She said he wasn't such a flat as to believe all that bosh. But as she spoke there came a great blast of wind through the arch, and set the barrel rolling. So they made haste to get out of it, for they had no notion of being rolled over and over as if they had been packed tight and wouldn't hurt, like a ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald

... who has money of his own and could live like a gentleman, coming along and taking the bread out of our mouths by accepting fees and rewards for hunting after criminals. Of course I know they say he is lavish with his money and gives away more than he earns, but that's all bosh—he sticks it in his own pocket, right enough. One thing is certain: he gets paid whether he wins or loses; that is to say, he gets his fee in any case, but of course if he wins something will be added to his fee. In the meantime ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson

... people make asses of themselves sometimes, Lords as well as Commons. I don't see how a man is to go on talking for ever about laws and landleagues, and those sort of things without doing so. It is all bosh to me. And so I should think it must be to you, as you don't do it. But I do not think that father is worse than anybody else; and I think that his words are ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope

... the nonsense those chaps who are continually meddling with nature's secrets tell us, we should sit with shut lips and folded hands lest we would destroy the equilibrium of the universe, or our own destiny. There is any quantity of bosh let loose on poor, long-suffering humanity, ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter

... new actors on this scene. Our presence here was the inevitable sequel of past events. We appeared with bayonets and bullets because of the bosh uttered on this floor; because of the bills—with treasonable stump-speeches in their bellies—passed here; because of the cowardice of the poltroons, the imbecility of the dodgers, and the arrogance of the bullies, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various

... room. His two backers-up stood in a corner—half intimidated, half contemptuous of the country people. "Queer lot for Phil to fall among," said Dick Bolsover. "Que diable allait-il faire dans cette galere?" said Harry Compton, who had been about the world. "Oh, bosh with your French, that nobody understands," ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant

... if it's immense bosh. If he has got something that won't go in a letter he hasn't got the thing. Vereker's own statement to me was exactly that the 'figure' ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James

... "It's no bosh at all, I assure you, my dear signor," replied Figgins, earnestly; "the fact is, I heard you play on your flute, and its sweet tones so soothed my spirits—which are at this moment extremely low—that I am come ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng

... sign of parting!" cried DUNRAVEN, swift upstarting; "Sweating's an accursed system, but if now our toil is o'er, We leave twaddle as sole token of the swelling words we've spoken. Public faith in us is broken! Bah! I quit, I "bust", boil o'er! Take my seat, sign your Report, about such bosh my spirit ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 5, 1890 • Various

... "Oh, bosh!" said Jack, "I'm in earnest. What's the use of nonsense? Really, my dear fellow, why not advertise in the Quebec papers? She'll be sure ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille

... every thing one way. To be sure, as long as the woman's glaring eyes and face distorted by passion were before him, he interpreted her words simply; but when he thought the matter over he said to himself, "The evil-eye! That is all bosh; the girl is in Lady Bassett's secrets; and I am not to see young master: some day I shall know the ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade

... "admiration" for the "excellent British Constitution," desiring only to live and die as free citizens under the protecting wing of the mother country. Recalling all this sickening sentimentalism, Mr. Paine uttered a loud and ringing BOSH! Let us clear our minds of cant, he said in effect, and ask ourselves what is the nature of government in general and of the famous British Constitution in particular. Like the Abbe Sieyes, Mr. Paine had completely mastered the science of government, which was in fact extremely ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker

... compelled to jump aboard the train without my ticket and wire back to get my trunk expressed. Considering the temper of the people, the separate coach law may be the wisest plan for the South, but the statement that the two races have equal accommodations is all bosh. I pay the same money, but I cannot have a chair or a lavatory, and rarely a through car. I must crawl out at all times of night, and in all kinds of weather, in order to catch another dirty 'Jim Crow' coach to make my connections. I do not ask ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe

... dancing-masters; and the Black Prince, waiting upon his royal prisoner, was acting an inane masquerade: and Chivalry is naught; and honor is humbug; and Gentlemanhood is an extinct folly; and Ambition is madness; and desire of distinction is criminal vanity; and glory is bosh; and fair fame is idleness; and nothing is true but two and two; and the color of all the world is drab; and all men are equal; and one man is as tall as another; and one man is as good as another—and a great dale betther, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... lovable patron saint, a refuge from all we abhorred in the harbor. To slight him was a sacrilege. But reverence to Joe Kramer was a thing unknown. "Show me," he said, in reply to my outburst, "a single thing he ever wrote that wasn't sentimental bosh!" And we went at ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole

... "That's all bosh and moonshine," hiccoughed Kendale; "respect and high pedestal of honor and all that sort of thing. You're among the clouds; get down to earth. I'm only a man—you mustn't take me for a little god. Come, now, what in the name of reason ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey

... Mrs Masterman impatiently; "I can't stand all that bosh about higher powers, and developing magnetism. Of course there are a set of people who'd believe anything that seemed to give them a superior organisation; it's only another way of pandering to human vanity. Spiritualism ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)

... "Oh, bosh!" said Jack, getting up from his chair and striding about the room, with more irritation than he had ever shown to Edith before. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... pleasing it lies in the positive fact that it prefers not to be pleased. It undoubtedly objects to the very sensations which an artist aims to give. If I have heard once, I have heard fifty times resentful remarks similar to: "I'm not going to read any more bosh by him! Why, I simply couldn't put the thing down!" It is profoundly hostile to art, and the empire of art. It will not willingly yield. Its attitude to the magic spell is its attitude to the dentist's gas-bag. This is the most singular trait that ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett

... money or inherited it, and so far as I could see, about all that they could do was to read till they got the dry rot, or to booze till they got the wet rot. All books and no business makes Jack a jack-in-the-box, with springs and wheels in his head; all play and no work makes Jack a jackass, with bosh in his skull. The right prescription for him is play when he really needs it, and work whether he needs it or not; for that dose ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer

... "Bosh!" said Cap. "If you go doing the sentimental you won't look like me a bit, and that will spoil all. There! keep your veil close, for it's windy, you know; throw back your head and fling yourself along with a swagger, as if you didn't care, ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth

... stand it if the Revenoo can. On the same principle young men should continer to get drunk on French brandy and to smoke their livers as dry as a corn-cob with Cuby cigars because 4-sooth if they don't, it will hurt the Revenoo! This talk 'bout the Revenoo is of the bosh boshy. One thing is tol'bly certin—if we don't send gold out of the country we shall have the consolation of knowing that it is in the country. So I say great credit is doo the wimin for this patriotic move—and to tell the trooth, the wimin genrally know what they're ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 2 • Charles Farrar Browne

... oakum taste in my mouth?" sputtered young Holmes. "Bosh! I'd sooner have a good gargle than ...
— The Grammar School Boys of Gridley - or, Dick & Co. Start Things Moving • H. Irving Hancock

... Vril-ya. To those who have not read or have forgotten that historical composition, it may be convenient to state briefly that Koom-Posh with the Vril-ya is the name for the government of the many, or the ascendency of the most ignorant or hollow, and may be loosely rendered Hollow-Bosh. When Koom-Posh degenerates from popular ignorance into the popular ferocity which precedes its decease, the name for that state of things is ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... nice to her; we took her for a walk with us on Saturday, though she doesn't care a bit about botany, and wanted to be at the skating-rink or the pictures, and talked bosh.' She paused, and then added, 'By the way, does your sister know what silly ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin

... "Oh, bosh!" Jules Keaveney, the Skilk Resident-Agent, at the head of the table, exclaimed. "You soldiers are all alike—begging your pardon, General von Schlichten," he nodded in the direction of the guest of honor. "If they don't ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr

... think Of its nauseous messes to eat and drink, And its frozen tank to wash in. That was the first that brought me grief, And made me weep, till I sought relief In an emblematical handkerchief, To choke such baby bosh in. ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert

... not going to stay to listen to you talking bosh any more," said Peter roughly. "There's the ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... frown on the King of Finland's dark face; I saw Sir Peter Grebe grow redder and redder, and press his thick lips together to control the angry "Bosh!" which need not have been uttered to have been understood. The Baron de Becasse wore a painfully neutral smile, which froze his face into a quaint gargoyle; the Crown-Prince of Monaco looked at his polished fingernails with a startled ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers

... "Bosh! there are no fairies nowadays," said Fellowes. "See here, Shivers, I'll write home and ask my mother if she won't invite you to come back with me for ...
— The Christmas Fairy - and Other Stories • John Strange Winter

... cannot now feel sure if I really was in earnest at all, as she and Peterkin certainly were, about the enchantment and the witch. I remember I laughed at it to myself sometimes, and called it 'bosh' in my own mind. And yet I did not quite think it only that. After all, I was only a little boy myself, and Margaret had such a common-sensical way, even in talking of fanciful things, that somehow you couldn't laugh at her, and Pete, of ...
— Peterkin • Mary Louisa Molesworth

... echoed Warburton with good-natured scorn, "so much that you've all but made up your mind to go down to Southwold whilst she is there! Bosh! You cared for one girl in a way ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing

... "watch your own scalp. Hardin, I'll not dodge you. You are going on the wrong road. We split company here. But there's room enough in California for you and me. As for any 'shooting talk,' it's all bosh. You will get in a hot corner, unless you hear me out. I tell you now, to acknowledge your child by that woman. Save your election; save ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... had vanished in spite of his apparent opposition to Maurice's suit. "I should like nothing better—for my own part; but we are both bound to consider Lesley. You know you are a shocking bad match for her. Oh, I know you are the descendant of kings and all that sort of bosh, but as a matter of fact you are only a young medico, a general practitioner, and his lordship is bound to think that I am making something for myself ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... came in afterwards, he crossed over to us, and Jane introduced him to me when he had talked a little. He is quite a sort of gentleman, and is very much at home with every one. He laughed at everything I said. Mrs. Smith (such bosh putting "de Yorburgh" on!) sat on a big sofa with Lord Valmond, and she opened and shut her eyes at him, and Jane Roose says she takes every one's friend away; and Lord George Lane came up, and we talked, and he wasn't such an ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn

... such bosh!" he cried scornfully. "It makes me sick to hear a fellow talk such nonsense. Balls and dinners—faugh! If that's your idea of happiness, why not settle down in London and be done with it! That's the place for you! I'd give my ears to go round the world, but I wouldn't thank you to go with a dress ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey

... to be needed by Herbert, who had a good ear and voice, but had always regarded it as 'bosh' to cultivate them, except for the immediately practical purposes that had of late been forced on him. The choral society had improved him; but Jenny was taken aback by being called on to accompany him in Mrs. Brown's Luggage; and his father made his ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

... afraid she lets Sam talk poetry to her," Sam's father broke out. "Stuff! absolute stuff! His mother sometimes tells me of it. Why," he ended piteously, "half the time I can't understand what it's about; it's just bosh!" ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland

... the worst kind, but where would I pick up the money to pay my way? Of course I might float down the Mississippi on the Tramp all right, given time enough; but that would be kind of lonely business for one; now if you could only—say, I wonder—oh, bosh, of course you wouldn't want to even think of it," and he dropped ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne

... all very systematic," growled the superintendent, sorting out his papers, "but I tell you, sir, it's all BOSH!" The latter word he jerked out viciously, as he slapped down on the table the final product of the Professor's labours. "There," he continued, "that's what he calls the 'full rendering,' and I reckon it'll make your hair curl. It might be ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman

... he saw a tiny little animal hardly big enough to be seen on the plain. While doubting whether the voice could come from such a diminutive source, the little animal said to him, "My grandson, you will call me Bosh-kwa-dosh. Why are you so desolate? Listen to me, and you shall find friends and be happy. You must take me up and bind me to your body, and never put me aside, and success in life shall attend you." He obeyed the voice, sewing up the little animal in the folds of a string, ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft

... "Bosh!" laughed Alice. "Excuse my slang, sister mine, but you ought to read fewer of those romantic stories, and more joke books. Oh, there goes Paul, and with a fish pole, too. I'm ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm - or, Queer Happenings While Taking Rural Plays • Laura Lee Hope

... Canada for three months, just to see what life was like in a wild district. There never was such a fellow to rough it. And as for Molly, well, now, really, if he happened to take a fancy to her, and if she happened to like him, I wouldn't bosh the business, if I were you, grandmother. Take my word for it, Molly ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... heart,— This suffers from the patent vice Of being not Art but Artifice. 'Tis deeply with the fault imbued Of Inverisimilitude: He's written out; his skill's forgot: He only writes to Boil the Pot! It is not true; it will not wash; 'Tis mere imaginative Bosh; And if he can't" (they told him flat) "Get nearer to the Life than that, He will not earn ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley

... "Bosh! Her mind's better than ours will ever be! Uncle John went to Dr. Stanchon about it and he said that mamma was in perfect health, good for ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... fool of a plumber!' said George, irritably, when they were in the street again; 'wonder if he thinks I'm going to employ him after that! Not that it isn't all bosh, of course—— Why, Ella, you're ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey

... "Bosh! Your heart has been through a dozen accidents of this character, Dank, and it is good for a hundred more. I'll rejoice when this voyage is ended and we have him safe on his way ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... "Bosh," said Kettle. "If it was me that talked about getting poisoned, there'd be some sense in it. I know I'm not popular here. But you're a man that's liked. You hit it off with these Belgian brutes, and you make the niggers laugh. ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne

... "Bosh!" her husband scoffed. "If English people are to be bullied and their liberty interfered with in this manner, we might as well have lost the war ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... "Bosh! what do you expect me to find there but the marks of your dirty paws while plucking him, I'm too devilish hungry for such nonsense, Nutcrackers; but show me the Injin that would venture to touch his legs now. If I wouldn't mark him, then my ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson

... "Early training, bosh," answered the minister, losing his patience as even ministers will sometimes do. "You'd better say his lack of early training. I tell you, Fanny, the true gentleman, whether he be Christian or not, values character ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright

... man," he said, quickly. "I tell you he will never speak all you wish. That is rot—bosh. But he would be most good to make to see things. Suppose now we pretend that it was only play"—I had never seen Grish Chunder so excited—"and pour the ink-pool into his hand. Eh, what do you think? I tell you that he could see anything that a man could ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... 'That's all bosh,' said Josephine. 'I like people that are jolly. The German is real jolly. Last week we danced it with candles—it ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner

... stated and restated to him my plans. The fellow, evidently jealous of my superior financial ability, constantly interrupted me with ejaculations of "Pish!" "Bosh!" "Pshaw!" "No go!" and finally, with a loud thump on a table, covered with such costly but valueless objects as books and plates, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... you've been thinking things over, I know. I was there. I heard it all, peace on earth, goodwill to men. Bosh. Peace, when there is no peace. Good will! I don't want your peace and ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... "Bosh and tommyrot!" Buckton fairly glowed. "Never, never, when the case is like ours. We are simply doing our duty to ourselves. Love you? Why, I adore you! You have saved my life, darling. I would have killed myself. I've been on the very brink of it more than once. I've suffered agonies ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben

... "Bosh!" said Tish. But I could see that she was uncomfortable. "If there's trouble I'll send her our birth certificates. Besides, I thought you said ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... it takes but half an ounce of blood out of the system. And what is the cause of that rare ivint—which occurs only to pashmints that can't afford docking—Dith from old age? Think ye the man really succumms under years, or is mowed down by Time? Nay, yon's just Potry an' Bosh. Nashins have been thinned by the lancet, but niver by the scythe; and years are not forces, but misures of events. No, Centenarius decays and dies bekase his bodil' expindituire goes on, and his bodil' income falls off by failure ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... "That's all bosh. You don't expect me to believe that you still stick to that absurd fiction of yours—that ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance

... is laughable, isn't it? What he says about the soldiers at West Point is all "bosh." Nobody will believe it. I don't. I wish the Herald reporter who wrote the above would visit Fort Sill and ask some of the white soldiers there what they think of me. I am afraid the Herald didn't get its "gift of prophecy" I from the right ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper

... are all on fire," over the burning words of some Brontean Pythoness, but when you open the last thrilling work of Maggie Marigold, and are immediately submerged "in a weak, washy, everlasting flood" of insipidity, twaddle, bosh, and heart-rending sorrow, you do not shut the book with a jerk. Why not? Because in the dismal distance you dimly descry two figures swimming, floating, struggling towards each other, and a languid soupon of curiosity ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... to his men, and motioned towards the boat where forty or fifty others showed. "Bosh, Pasha! That's no reason. That's flummery, and you know and the Highness knows it. That would have been all very well in the desert, but this is not the desert, and I'm not doing business with the Highness any more. What's the penalty ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... 'Bosh! It has a great deal to do with it. I can afford to bring your children up as well as Teddy, my boy. We can marry. And in a year or two no one would ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson

... What you call bosh is the only thing men dare die for. Later on, Liberty will not be Catholic enough: men will die for human perfection, to which they will sacrifice ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw

... her reputation, it's all bosh! People are jealous of her beauty that say nasty things. She told me so herself. Besides, we only do a little shopping, and it is so ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham

... "Oh, bosh! Prove it," answered the young man, pale and startled, but cool in speech and action. "We'll prove it all right. The stuff is hereabouts." The girl said something to the officer in the Chinook language. She saw he did not ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... inspiration is one of the reasons why the world is so full of unliterary writers, and why so many of real talent fail of success. It is very easy, in the flush of composition, to consider yourself gifted above your fellows, and to go on writing reams of bosh that even you would despise, if you could view it with an unprejudiced eye; and it is equally easy to persuade yourself that anything that comes from your pen must be incapable of improvement, and that if your writings sell, you have reached ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett

... "Rot and bosh! That's what they told us when we were kids. But there is one thing they didn't tell us then. They let us find it out for ourselves afterwards." Olney paused for effect, then added, "And what they didn't tell us was that ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... "Bosh!" Skinner said wrathfully. "I don't suppose you were a bit more hurt than you would be in a good close rally at football. It is a thousand times better after all than mooning about Windsor, or being mewed ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty

... my dear master; but decide soon, for nothing gets mouldy so fast as a book; write hot, serve hot, and buy hot,—that's the rule for authors, publishers, and public; all is bosh outside of it, and no good ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac

... "Bosh!" cried Jack. "He's too stupid to understand anything above the level of his nose, and I'd like to flatten ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss

... enthusiasm of the youngsters. If I've got to drink an extra glass of port, I'm there; if it's Sir Roger de Coverley, I'm there; I'll do anything to add to the general Schwaermerei. What the modern litterateur thinks it fine to write about Christmas being all sham sentiment is simply insufferable bosh. Christmas isn't in the least bit played out—though the magazinist may be, or may pretend to be. I think it's a grand thing to have a season for sending good wishes, for recollection of absent friends, for letting the young folk kick up their heels. I say, Linn, I hope there's going to be some ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black

... "Oh bosh, you are thinking of what Captain Hazzard said about the Jap secret service. Our friend Oyama is much too thick to ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... "All bosh," he asserted as he watched Dallas and Marylyn busy with preparations for breakfast. "A hull regiment of soldiers couldn' put us offen this lan', t' say nothin' of a man thet ain't done a thing on it sence he took it up. Ah might jes' as well ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates

... swings upon a twig, not engrossed in his body. He did not look very strong. His mother said he had a weak heart. He said he had a particularly strong heart and used to protest, "Oh, Mother, I do wish you wouldn't talk that bosh about me." To which Mrs. Perch would say, "It's no good saying you haven't got a weak heart because you have got a weak heart and you've always had a weak heart. Surely ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson

... heard such bosh!" Zaidos said. "Why didn't you write and tell him it was perfect nonsense, and ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske

... "Bosh!" said I; "the poor wicked devil is where he can't get out. For Heaven's sake, Le Bihan, what is this stuff you are talking in the year of ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various

... the meanest kind of bosh teaching people that there will be eternal punishment for ignorant wrong-doings in this short kindergarten experience of life, making them believe their last chance for anything better is gone forever. Half the sins that are committed ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield

... our eyes met and held. Moved by one impulse we turned from the stream and remarked what bosh people will sometimes talk, and discussed the coming Italian trip as we moved cautiously among the briers. But when we came once more to the veteran pines, they seemed more glamorous than ever in ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler

... truly, Miss EMMY; but that's only jest by the way, 'ARRY ain't one to brag of bong four tunes; but wot I wos wanting to say Is about this here "spiling the River" which snarlers set down to our sort. Bosh! CHARLIE, extreme Tommy rot! It's these sniffers ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various

... "Bosh!" he cried angrily. "All old woman's nonsense. Can't tell what's going on inside a pair of bellows—can they? Then why make condemned asses of themselves, and say they can! Don't tell Charles I've written this check—he's the ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome

... Shaw was! Pretended to be a lawyer, Fletcher did, in those days. He was smooth enough for one, but too lazy. I didn't know that when I married him. What I didn't know about him then! But I learned. He thought he could scare Mr. Gordon into settling for a few thousand. Of course my claim was all bosh. Pyramid Gordon hardly knew I was in his office. Besides, I was married, anyway. He didn't guess that. But the bluff didn't work. We were the ones who were ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford

... he told her easily, a smile in his shrewd eyes. "You're a young woman—and I'm an ineligible man. So Lady Farquhar thinks we oughtn't to meet. That's all bosh. I'm not intending to make love to you, even though I think you're a mighty nice girl. But say I was. What then? Your friends can't shut you up in a glass cage if you're going to keep on growing. Life was ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine

... all bosh! If you mean to ask me if I believe that there is a Power that will interfere miraculously to rescue us from freezing or starving here, I answer promptly, I do not. God doesn't work so. Persons have to take the ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens

... hand,'" said the gentleman, reading his last entry with great solemnity, "'is worth two in the Bosh.'" ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... Mr. Black could sanction with his presence, such suicidal rant, such absurd bosh of that pair of demagogues, who hurried down these four hundred diggers from Creswick, helpless, grog-worn, that is, more or less dirty and ragged, and proved the greatest nuisance. One of them, MICHAEL TUEHY, behaved valiantly and so I ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello

... 'Bosh!' said Holden, picking his cue from the rack. 'May I cut in? It's dew. I've been riding through high crops. My faith! my boots are ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling

... cried Uncle Ben, excitedly. "No one ever stops to think about it, but keeps right on filling the minds of their children with stuff that never benefits them a particle. How many boys of to-day want to read 'Mother's Brave Little Man,' or 'Jerry the Newsboy'? Bosh! Boys of to-day want 'True Tales of an Indian Trapper,' or 'Boy Scout Adventures,' or good clean stories—school life, or outdoor sports. It's LIFE and HEALTH ...
— The Blue Birds' Winter Nest • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... "Oh, bosh!" I interrupted. "Don't tell me you have another presentiment. If you have keep it ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln



Words linked to "Bosh" :   jargon, baloney, tommyrot, patois, tosh, cant, boloney, vernacular, tarradiddle, lingo, twaddle, slang, bilgewater, drool



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