Boswell

UK/ˈbɒzˌwɛl/US/ˈbɑzˌwɛl/

Boswell proper noun: a Scottish habitational surname from Old French of Norman origin from Beuzeville in France.

Image: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Proper noun

Boswell

A Scottish habitational surname from Old French of Norman origin from Beuzeville in France.
1. James Boswell, biographer of Samuel Johnson.
A hamlet in Elkington parish, East Lindsey district, Lincolnshire, England (OS grid ref TF2790).
A town in Grant Township, Benton County, Indiana, United States.
A town in Choctaw County, Oklahoma, United States.
A borough in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, United States.
A community on Kootenay Lake in the Kootenays, south-east British Columbia, Canada.
A former cannery town on the Central Coast of British Columbia.

Noun

Boswell (plural Boswells)

A devoted admirer and recorder of a person's words and deeds.
- "I think that I had better go, Holmes."
  "Not a bit, Doctor. Stay where you are. I am lost without my Boswell. And this promises to be interesting. It would be a pity to miss it."1891, Arthur Conan Doyle, 'A Scandal in Bohemia'

Forms of Boswell

plural	Boswells

Origin of Boswell

Scottish surname, from Norman, named after Beuzeville, from Beuze + -ville ("Bosi's farm"); first element from Old Norse Bosi, from Proto-Germanic *bausuz.

Words formed from Boswell

Questions about Boswell

What does Boswell mean?: Boswell means a Scottish habitational surname from Old French of Norman origin from Beuzeville in France.
What part of speech is Boswell?: Boswell can be a proper noun or a noun.
How do you pronounce Boswell?: Boswell is pronounced /ˈbɒzˌwɛl/ (UK).

Words near Boswell in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: Boswell (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: 2026-09-02

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