bug, an object of terror, bogey, hobgoblin. Tam. Shrew, i. 2. 214; Hamlet, v. 2. 22; Peele, Battle of Alcazar, i. 2 (Moor); ‘Thou shalt not nede to be afrayed for eny bugges by night’, Coverdale, Ps. xc (xci), 5. ME. bugge, ‘ducius’ (Prompt.).
bug words, pompous, conceited words, Massinger, New Way to Pay, iii. 2 (Marrall); Ford, Perkin Warbeck, iii. 2 (Huntley). See EDD. (s.v. Bug, adj. 1).
bulch, to stave in the bottom of a ship. Stanyhurst, tr. of Virgil, Aeneid i. 132. Cp. bulge, the ‘bilge’, bottom of a ship’s hull (NED. s.v. Bulge, sb. 4).
bulch, a bull-calf; used as a term of endearment by a witch. Ford, Witch of Edmonton, v. 1 (Sawyer). Still in prov. use in Scotland: ‘Sic a bonnie bulch o’ a bairn’, a Banffshire expression (EDD.).
bulchin, a bull-calf. Tusser, Husbandry, 33; Drayton, Pol. xxi. 65; used as a term of endearment, Shirley, Gamester, iv. 1 (Young B.); a term of contempt, Middleton, A Fair Quarrel, iv. 4 (Capt. Albo). A Shropsh. word for a calf; fig. a stout child (EDD.). See [bulkin].
bulcking, a term of endearment. Stanyhurst, tr. of Virgil, i. 671. See NED. (s.v. Bulkin).
bulk, the belly, Lucrece, 467; the trunk, the body; spelt boulke. Elyot, Castle Health (NED.); Richard III, i. 4. 40.
bulk, a framework projecting from the front of a shop. Coriolanus, ii. 1. 226; Othello, v. 1. 1.
bulker, a petty thief; also, a street-walker, prostitute. (Cant.) Otway, Soldier’s Fortune, i. 1 (2 Bully). One who sleeps on a ‘bulk’, one who steals from a ‘bulk’; see [bulk] (above).
bulkin, a bull-calf; ‘A young white bulkin’, Holland, tr. of Pliny, bk. xxviii, c. 12. An E. Anglian word (EDD.). See [bulchin].