Pl. boluses: 7 bolus, 7–8 bolus’s, 8–9 bolusses. [a. mod.L. bōlus, a. Gr. βῶλος clod, lump of earth.]

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  1.  Med. A medicine of round shape adapted for swallowing, larger than an ordinary pill. (Often used somewhat contemptuously.)

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1603.  Florio, Montaigne (1634), 554. I will not have a Bolus, or a glister.

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1681.  trans. Willis’ Rem. Med. Wks., Voc., Bolus, is a medicine made up into a thick substance to be swallow’d not liquid, but taken on a knives point.

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1751.  Shenstone, Wks. & Lett., III. 178. I have been taking saline draughts and bolus’s.

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1832.  Anna M. Porter, Hungarian Bro., v. 53. Physic him to death with pills and boluses.

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  fig.  1637.  Earl Monm., Malvezzi’s Romvlvs, 229. Cruell actions are so many bolus, which are never better taken than when wrapt up in gold.

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1780.  Cowper, Lett., 3 May. Swallowing such boluses as I send you.

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1878.  Black, Green Past., iii. 23. Resolved not to swallow your Home Rule bolus.

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  2.  A small rounded mass of any substance.

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1782.  A. Monro, Compar. Anat. (ed. 3), 23. The bolus would be in danger of falling out of the mouth.

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1835.  T. Hook, G. Gurney (1850), I. i. 3. A round mirror, encircled with gilt boluses.

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1867.  F. Francis, Angling, i. (1880), 9. A barley-meal bolus is the bait for roach.

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1881.  Sat. Rev., No. 1320, 206. One leaden bolus of the old ounce-of-lead pattern.

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  3.  A kind of clay; = BOLE2 1.

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1682.  Grew, Anat. Plants, 242. Bolus’s are the Beds, or as it were, the Materia prima, both of opacous Stones, and Metals.

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1863.  Baring-Gould, Iceland, xii. 210. The soil is composed of soft bolus full of splinters of trachyte.

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  Hence Bolus-ways, -wise, adv., as a bolus.

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1689.  Moyle, Sea Chyrurg., Pref. If the Patient cannot take a Medecine in one form (as Bolus-waies)).

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