Forms: 4 bous, 6– bouse, bowse, 8 bowze: See also BOOZE. [Related to BOUSE v.: also BOOZE, q.v.]
1. colloq. Drink; liquor. (The first quot. may mean a drinking-vessel.) About 1600 a word of vagabonds’ cant.
c. 1300. in Wright’s Lyric P., xxxix. Drynke to hym deorly of fol god bous … When that he is dronke ase a dreynt mous.
1567. Harman, Caveat, 34. Then doth this vpright man call for a gage of bowse, whiche is a quarte pot of drinke.
1632. Massinger, New Way, &c. II. i. Wellborn. No bouse, nor no tobacco? Tapwell. Not a suck, sir.
1730–6. Bailey, Bowze (with the Vulgar) any sort of strong Liquor.
2. A drinking-bout, a carouse.
1786. Burns, To J. Kennedy, ii. An’ if we dinna hae a bouze, I’se ne’er drink mair.
1812. W. Tennant, Anster Fair, V. liii. With riot and with bouse.
1857. S. Osborn, Quedah, iv. 53. All hands had had what they graphically termed ‘a bowse-out.’
1858. Carlyle, Fredk. Gt. (1865), I. III. ix. 192. A good bouse of liquor now and then.
