Usually in pl. bots, botts Sc. bats, batts. [Etymology unknown: connection with BITE is phonologically inadmissible.]
1. A parasitical worm or maggot; now restricted to the larvæ of flies of the genus Œstrus. The name is considered to belong properly to the larva of Œ. equi, inhabiting the digestive organs of the horse, but is applied also to that of Œ. bovis (the gadfly), found under the skin of cattle, and to that of Œ. ovis, found in the frontal sinus of sheep. The botts is sometimes used as sing., as the name of the disease caused by these parasites.
1523. Fitzherb., Husb., § 102. The bottes is an yll dysease, and they lye in a horse mawe, and they be an inche long white coloured, and a reed heed, and as moche as a fyngers ende.
a. 1529. Skelton, Agst. Scottes, 171. The roughefoted Scottes We have well eased them of the bottes.
1568. Jacob & Esau, I. i. in Hazl., Dodsl., II. 189. He hath either some worms or botts in his brain.
1617. Markham, Caval., I. 64. All foales naturally … are euer subiect to great aboundance, both of Mawwormes, Grubbes, and Bots.
a. 1722. Lisle, Husb. (1757), 465. Groundsel and savine are good against the worms, commonly called the bots in horses.
1836. Penny Cycl., V. 261/2. The hole made by the bot [in the beast’s hidej in his escape will apparently close.
fig. 1602. Return Parnass., I. ii. (Arb.), 13. Some of them are at this instant the bots and glanders of the printing house.
1647. Ward, Simp. Cobler, 72. [The Irish] are the very offall of men … the Bots that crawle on the Beasts taile.
b. ‘Ludicrously applied to a bowel complaint in men, Selkirks.; also used to denote a colic, West Scotl.’ (Jamieson).
1816. Scott, Old Mort., vii. ‘The last thing ye sent Cuddie, when he had the batts.’
2. Used as an expression of execration. (Cf. POX.)
1584. 3 Ladies Lond., I. in Hazl., Dodsl., VI. 257. A bots on thy motley beard!
1606. Sir G. Goosecappe, IV. ii. in Bullen, O. Pl. (1884), III. 65. A botts a that sticking word odorous, I can never hitt on’t.
1719. D’Urfey, Pills (1872), IV. 124. Bots on them all, Both great and small.
3. Comb.: bot-bee, bot-fly, an insect of the genus Œstrus, whose eggs produce the bots; bot-hole, a hole in a hide made by a bot in escaping.
1852. T. Harris, Insects New Eng., 499. The various insects, improperly called bot-bees, are two-winged flies.
1819. Rees, Cycl., s.v., Œ. ovis, the sheep bot-fly…. Œ. tarandi, the reindeer bot-fly.
1816. Kirby & Sp., Entomol. (1843), I. 121. The Tanners also prefer those hides that have the greatest number of bot-holes in them, which are always the best and strongest.
1847. Carpenter, Zool., § 733.
