bossela
n.— «Billy-boy had come across the song Mary Muir’s gettin’ a man’s bossela (sung on hen nights) while doing research on the mill workers of Stewarton for his series The Blue Bonnets for Radio Scotland.…”Yes, the Concise Scots Dictionary defines the word ‘boss’ as ‘a rounded prominence, a rounded mass, a tussock’. As I say, I do hope you can explain ‘bossela’ in a way more acceptable to mim-moothed modern urbanites, bit a doot it.”» —“Has Mary mystery been solved?” by Simon Pia The Scotsman Feb. 17, 2005. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Amid court-ordered busing in the 1970s, a middle-school teacher tried to distract her nervous students on the first day of class with this strange assignment: find a monarch caterpillar. The result? A memorable lesson in the miracle of metamorphosis...
In 1971, when a new public library opened in Troy, Michigan, famous authors and artists were invited to write letters to the city’s youngest readers, extolling the many benefits of libraries. One of the loveliest was from E.B. White, author of...