bosoms

Noun

bosom (plural bosoms)

1. (dated) The breast or chest of a human (or sometimes of another animal).
   • Serene, smiling, enigmatic, she faced him with no fear whatever showing in her dark eyes.[…]She put back a truant curl from her forehead where it had sought egress to the world, and looked him full in the face now, drawing a deep breath which caused the round of her bosom to lift the lace at her...1910, Emerson Hough, chapter I, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC
2. The seat of one's inner thoughts, feelings, etc.; one's secret feelings; desire.
   • my poor dear duke[…], in consequence of the excitement created in his august bosom by her frantic violence and grief, had a fit in which I very nigh lost him.1844 January–December, W[illiam] M[akepeace] Thackeray, “The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq. [The Luck of Barry Lyndon.]”, in Miscellanies: Prose and Verse, volume III, London: Bradbury and Evans, […]...
3. The protected interior or inner part of something; the area enclosed as by an embrace.
   • … Mr Toodle … was refreshing himself with tea in the bosom of his family.1846 October 1 – 1848 April 1, Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1848, →OCLC
4. The part of a dress etc. covering the chest; a neckline.
   • And he put his hand into his boſome: and when hee tooke it out, behold, his hand was leprous as ſnowe.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Exodus 4:6
5. A breast, one of a woman's breasts
   • I dont [sic] know that her bosoms were fuller than usual.1833, E.K. Avery, B.F. Hallet, Trial of Rev. Mr. Avery, Boston, page 140

   Synonyms:

   breasts

6. Any thing or place resembling the breast; a supporting surface; an inner recess; the interior.
   • I observed, indeed, that the present war had filled the church with many of these uninhabited monuments, which had been erected to the memory of persons whose bodies were perhaps buried in the plains of Blenheim, or in the bosom of the ocean.1711, Joseph Addison, The Spectator, number 26

See all 12 meanings of bosom