bombase

English

Etymology

From Old French bombace (“cotton, cotton wadding”), from Late Latin bombax (“cotton”), a variant of bombyx (“silkworm”), from Ancient Greek βόμβυξ (bómbux, “silkworm”), possibly related to Middle Persian pmbk' (“cotton”), from a Proto-Indo-European.

Noun

bombase (usually uncountable, plural bombases)

1. (historical) Cotton wool made from raw cotton, typically used as padding in clothing or as a stopper.
   • 1579, Hollyband, Italian schole-maister:

     Need you any inke and bombase?

   • 1611, Thomas Coryate [i.e., Thomas Coryat], “My Obseruations of the Most Glorious, Peerelesse, and Mayden Citie of Venice: […]”, in Coryats Crudities Hastily Gobled Vp in Five Moneths Trauells […], London: […] W[illiam] S[tansby for the author], →OCLC, page 260, lines 18–24:

     For all of them vſe but one and the ſame forme of habite, euen the ſlender doublet made cloſe to the body, without much quilting or bombaſe, and long hoſe plaine, without thoſe new fangled curioſities, and ridiculous ſuperfluities of panes, plaites, and other light toyes vſed with vs Engliſh men.

   • 1896, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, James Fitzmaurice-Kelly, The History of Don Quixote of the Mancha, page 49:

     There drops not, infamous Kenell, quote Don-Quixote, all inflamed with choler; there drops not, I say, from her that which thou sayest, but Amber and Civet, among bombase ; and she is not blinde of an eye, or crooke-backt, but is straighter then a spindle of Guadarama: but all of you together shall pay for the great blasphemy thou hast spoken against so immense a beautie, as is that of my Mistresse.

   • 1900, “Transactions”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name), volume 4, Ecclesiological Society, page 155:

     He also quotes from William Thomas (Principal Rules of Italian Grammar, 1548), “Bucherame, buckeramme; and some there is white, made of bombase, so thinne that a man mai see through it.”

   • 1902, “Papers of the British School at Rome”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name), volume 41, page 130:

     Overwhelming pictorial evidence shows that the standard method of stopping at the time was wax with leather, parchment, cloth or bombase (crude cottonwool).

   • 1978, Helen McKearin, Kenneth M. Wilson, American bottles & flasks and their ancestry, page 251:

     Evidence that bombase (raw cotton or cotton wool) was formed into a stopper and the mouth of the bottle then covered with parchment or sized cloth appears in a mid- 16th-century recipe for water to heal all wounds.

   • 1998, Giuseppe Barbieri, Carmelo Alberti, Le Venezie e l'Europa: testimoni di una civiltà sociale, page 275:

     The countries of North Europe also imported special cloths and mixed cloths, bombases, sieves, leather goods, iron, copper, lead, tin, silver and ironware.

Verb

bombase (third-person singular simple present bombases, present participle bombasing, simple past and past participle bombased)

1. (obsolete) To pad with, or as with, bombase.
   • 1577, Foure Bookes of Husbandry, collected by M. C. Heresbachius:

     and though the owle seeme to be greater then the pigion, by reason of the thicknesse of her feathers, yet wyll they creepe in at as little a place as the pigion wyll, so small and little is theyr bodyes, though they be bombased with feathers.

   • 1595, Stubbs, Anatomie of Abuses:

     the doublettes were so hard quilted, stuffed, bombased, and sewed, as they could neither worke, nor yet well play in them.”

2. (obsolete) To astonish.
   • 1638, Sir Thomas Herbert, Some Yeares Travels Into Divers Parts of Asia and Afrique, page 126:

     For Bacchus then seemed alive agen: glasse bottle emptied of wine clashing one against another, the roaring of 200 Mules and Asses, and continuall shooting and whooping of above two thousand Plebeians all the way, so amazed us; that wee thought, never any civill strangers were bombased with such a Triumph; the noyse that Vulcan and all his Cyclops make, were not comparable to these Mymallonians.

   • 1884, Allan Ramsay, Select Poetical Works, Including His Gentle Shepherd:

     Then oft, by night, bombase hare-hearted fools, By tumbling down their cupboards, chairs, and stools. Whate'er's in spells, or if there witches be, Such whimsies seem the most absurd to me.

   • 1886, Bon-accord: The Illustrated News of the North - Volume 2, page 16:

     I wis clean bombased.