Vulgar corruption of BURSTER.
1839. New Monthly Mag., LVI. 358. We can … buy a two-penny buster at a baker’s-shop.
Hence in various specific senses.
2. slang (chiefly U.S.). a. ‘Something great’ (W.); something that ‘takes one’s breath away’; something that provokes excessive admiration or amusement. b. A roistering blade, a dashing fellow. c. A frolic; a spree.
1847. in W. T. Porter, Big Bear, etc. 43 (Bartlett). I went on, larning something every day, until I was reckoned a buster, and allowed to be decidedly the best bar hunter in my district.
1850. Mrs. Stowe, Uncle Tom’s C., iv. 23. Mas’r George … declared decidedly that Mose was a buster.
1867. F. H. Ludlow, Little Brother, Fleeing to Tarshish, 176. The rector’s growing reputation for preaching busters, which is the Missourian for pulpit eloquence.
3. In Australia. a. A violent southern gale prevalent at Sydney. b. To come a buster: to be thrown from a horse, ‘to come a cropper.’
1863. F. Fowler, Lett., in Athenæum, 21 Feb. The brick-fielder is … the cold wind or southerly buster, which … carries a thick cloud of dust … across the city.
1883. Times, 27 Sept., 9. The port is exposed to sudden gales, known as ‘southerly busters.’
1886. Cowan, Charcoal Sk. The buster and brick-fielder: Austral red-dust blizzard and red-hot simoom.
