BUST • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Bust

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noun

bust n.

A piece of sculpture representing the upper part of the human figure, including the head, shoulders, and breast. "Ambition sighed: she found it vain to trust The faithless column, and the crumbling bust."

The portion of the human figure included between the head and waist, whether in statuary or in the person; the chest or thorax; the upper part of the trunk of the body.

Especially: A woman's bosom (2).

verb

bust v. t. (past & past part. bust; pres. part. bursting; the past participle bursten is obsolete) To arrest, for committing a crime; often used in the passive; as, the whole gang got busted. (informal)

bust v. i. (past & past part. bust; pres. part. bursting; the past participle bursten is obsolete)

To break or burst. (informal)

(Card Playing) In blackjack, to draw a card that causes one's total to exceed twenty-one.

To go bankrupt.

to go bust to go bankrupt.

or bust or collapse from the effort; used in phrases expressing determination to do something; as, Oregon or bust, meaning "We will get to Oregon or die trying."

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Etymology of 'Bust'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Bust" Quotes from Famous Books

... sighed; she found it vain to trust The faithless column and the crumbling bust; Huge moles, whose shadows stretched from shore to shore, Their ruins perished, and their place no more! Convinced, she now contracts her vast design, And all her triumphs shrink into a coin. A narrow orb each crowded conquest ...

— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... one of them. His smile was better than anything he said. There is no word in the language that describes it. It was neither sweet nor saintly, but more like what a German poet called the mild radiance of a hidden sun. No picture, photograph or bust of Emerson has ever done him justice for this reason; only such a master as Giorgione could have ...

— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns

... years, but the very English bumpkins sometimes christen their boys by the name of Alexander—can there be a greater evidence of his greatness? As for Napoleon, there are some parts of India in which his bust is worshipped." Wishing to make up a triumvirate, I mentioned the name of Wellington, to which Francis Ardry merely said, "bah!" and resumed the subject ...

— The Romany Rye • George Borrow

... worthier hands than thine Will twine the laurel round his hallow'd bust; And raise in happier and more polish'd line A splendid trophy to his sacred dust; When thy untaught and unpretending lay Shall be forgotten and ...

— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various

... in gloomy silence while the great bell of the campanile tolled the call to the solemn funeral pageant by which the Republic offered reparation over the exhumed body of the victim. The senators, wrapped in mourning cloaks, surrounded the bust of the man they desired to honor as it was carried in triumph to the church where the tomb was prepared; and the three avvogadori, who had the keeping of the Golden Book, bore it on a great cushion behind the marble effigy, the leaf bound open ...

— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

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