bombase
bombase noun: cotton wool made from raw cotton, typically used as padding in clothing or as a stopper.
Noun
bombase (usually uncountable, plural bombases)
- Cotton wool made from raw cotton, typically used as padding in clothing or as a stopper.
- Need you any inke and bombase?1579, Hollyband, Italian schole-maister
- 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.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 […]...
Verb
bombase (third-person singular simple present bombases, present participle bombasing, simple past and past participle bombased)
- To pad with, or as with, bombase.
- 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.1577, Foure Bookes of Husbandry, collected by M. C. Heresbachius
- the doublettes were so hard quilted, stuffed, bombased, and sewed, as they could neither worke, nor yet well play in them.”1595, Stubbs, Anatomie of Abuses
- To astonish.
- 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...1638, Sir Thomas Herbert, Some Yeares Travels Into Divers Parts of Asia and Afrique, page 126
- 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.1884, Allan Ramsay, Select Poetical Works, Including His Gentle Shepherd
Examples of bombase in a sentence
- 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.”1900, “Transactions”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name), volume 4, Ecclesiological Society, page 155:
- Overwhelming pictorial evidence shows that the standard method of stopping at the time was wax with leather, parchment, cloth or bombase (crude cottonwool).1902, “Papers of the British School at Rome”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name), volume 41, page 130:
- The countries of North Europe also imported special cloths and mixed cloths, bombases, sieves, leather goods, iron, copper, lead, tin, silver and ironware.1998, Giuseppe Barbieri, Carmelo Alberti, Le Venezie e l'Europa: testimoni di una civiltà sociale, page 275:
Forms of bombase
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | bombases |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | bombases |
| present participle | bombasing |
| past participle | bombased |
| past | bombased |
Origin of bombase
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.
Questions about bombase
- What does bombase mean?
- Bombase means cotton wool made from raw cotton, typically used as padding in clothing or as a stopper.
- How do you use bombase in a sentence?
- 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.”
- What part of speech is bombase?
- Bombase can be a noun or a verb.
- What is the plural of bombase?
- The plural of bombase is bombases.
Words near bombase in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: bombase (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.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “bombase.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bombase. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.