† boistousadj.

Etymology: Of uncertain etymology. Certainly not connected with bost , boast n.¹ (as has been suggested on the ground of the 16th cent. Scots spelling boist for bōst ). The phonology and form suggest French origin, and in form the Middle English word exactly answers to Old French boisteus , Anglo-Norman boistous , modern French boiteux lame; but no connection of sense appears to be traceable, at least if the etymology proposed by Diez for the French word < boiste ‘box’, ‘knee-joint’ holds good. The essential meaning in English from the first appears to have been ‘coarse, rough’, but senses 1 – 4 are all nearly equally early. The later variants boisteous , boystuous , led to the modern boisterous adj. N.E.D. (1887) notes: ‘The modern Cornwall dialect has in West Cornish boist corpulence, boustis , bustious stout, overfat, burdensome to oneself; in East Cornish boostis fat, well-conditioned: compare sense 3. This occurrence of a sense so long obsolete in literary English, and especially of an apparent radical noun boist, not known at all in literature, is very curious: but there are no similar words known in Celtic Cornish. The Welsh bwyst ‘wildness’ appears to be a figment of Owen Pugh, but bwystus ‘wild, ferocious’ occurs in the 14th cent., and may be a derivative of an obsolete *bwyst < Latin bēstia; or it may be merely the Middle English buystous.’