Word.ws English Dictionary

boistous

boistous adjective: coarse, rude; noisy, violent; strong.

Adjective

boistous (comparative more boistous, superlative most boistous)

  1. (Early, Modern, obsolete) Coarse, rude; noisy, violent; strong.
    • Pawes he had grete and longe / Fyre of out of his mouthe spronge / His tayle was grete and no thynge small / And his body boystous withall / His blaste myght no man tell1510, Here begynneth a lytel treatyse of ye byrth & prophecye of Marlyn, folio 28ᵛ
    • The tune wherof semes yet full straunge, so boystous is the blast: / but quiet calmes settes forth still windes, when stormes be gon and past.1552, Thomas Churchyard, A playn and fynall confutacion: Of cammells corlyke oblatracion, page [1]

Forms of boistous

comparativemore boistous
superlativemost boistous
alternative formboystous

Origin of boistous

From Middle English boistous, from Anglo-Norman bustous (“rough”), perhaps from Old French boitous (“noisy”) (the source of French boiteux).

Questions about boistous

What does boistous mean?
Boistous means coarse, rude; noisy, violent; strong.
What part of speech is boistous?
Boistous is an adjective.

Words near boistous in the dictionary

  1. Boissonneaults
  2. Boissy-Saint-Léger
  3. boisterous
  4. boisterously
  5. boisterousness
  6. boistous
  7. boistroside
  8. boistrous
  9. Boisvert
  10. Boisverts
  11. Boitano

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: boistous (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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