Word.ws English Dictionary

bosun

bosun is the alternative form of boatswain.

Meaning of boatswain

Noun

boatswain (plural boatswains)

  1. The officer (or warrant officer) in charge of sails, rigging, anchors, cables etc. and all work on deck of a sailing ship.
  2. The petty officer of a merchant ship who controls the work of other seamen.
  3. A kind of gull, the jaeger.
  4. The tropicbird.

Forms of bosun

pluralbosuns
alternative formbo'sun
alternative formbo's'n
alternative formbos'n

Origin of bosun

Phonemic respelling of boatswain.

Words formed from bosun

Questions about bosun

What is bosun the alternative form of?
Bosun is the alternative form of boatswain.

Words near bosun in the dictionary

  1. Bostwick
  2. bostwickite
  3. Bostwicks
  4. bosu ball
  5. bosu balls
  6. bosun
  7. bosun's chair
  8. bosun's chairs
  9. bosuns
  10. bosutinib
  11. bosvark

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bosun (page history and authors); boatswain (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Wodencafe-bosun.wav.

Cite this entry: “bosun.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bosun. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.