bossy (1879)

[Ben Zimmer]

OED2 has "bossy" meaning "given to acting as 'boss' or leader" from
1882. Here are a few cites from 1879-1880:

---
http://books.google.com/books?id=480xAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA617
1879 _Lippincott's Monthly Magazine_ May 617 If you ever want to know
how hateful and tossy and bossy and snubby real nice people can be,
just let them come to rent a house of you when you're nothing but a
woman.
---
1880 _Indianapolis Sentinel_ 8 July 4/3 (GenealogyBank) Republicans
didn't ratify because there were too many dead candidates in the
Republican morgue. Poor Grant! once the great chief -- the bossiest
boss of them all -- who had the boomiest boom, and the most boomers.
---
1880 _Evening Journal_ (Jersey City, NJ) 3 Dec. 2/2 (GenealogyBank) An
injured woman in St. Louis has sued her husband for divorce on the
ground that he has called her "an o'd cow." He only meant that she was
too bossy, perhaps.
---

(The last one plays on the slightly older sense of "bossy" as a name
for a calf or cow.)

--bgz


--
Ben Zimmer
http://benzimmer.com/

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