[Origin unknown; senses 1 and 2 may be of distinct derivation. Sense 1 has been compared with Ger. böschen to slope. The plur. form is due to the fact that blast-furnaces were formerly of square section, and the ‘boshes’ were the four sloping walls of the lower portion.]
1. pl. In a blast-furnace, the lower part of the shaft, sloping downwards from the belly, or widest part, to the hearth.
1679. Plot, Staffordsh. (1686), 162. Where these oblique walls terminat, which they term the boshes.
1864. Q. Jrnl. Science, I. 492. The body and boshes being formed of distinct truncated cones.
2. ‘A trough in which bloomary tools (or, in copper-smelting, hot ingots) are cooled.’ Raymond, Mining Gloss., 1881.
