Bust

How to spell bust

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce bust

What does bust mean?

1. nounA sculpture of a person's head, shoulders, and upper chest.
2. nounA person's chest, or its measurement around the fullest part, especially a woman's.
3. verbTo break, smash, or burst something, used informally.
4. nounA sudden police raid or arrest, used informally.

Bust in a sentence

• noun

  A marble bust of the composer stood in the museum foyer.

• noun

  The tailor measured her bust before cutting the dress.

• verb

  If you drop the laptop you could bust the screen.

• noun

  The police bust led to several arrests downtown.

• noun

  The gallery commissioned a bronze bust of the retiring judge.

• noun

  The size chart lists bust, waist, and hip dimensions.

Where does bust come from?

Language of origin: Italian

The noun travelled into English in the 1600s from French buste, which in turn came from Italian busto meaning the upper part of the human body, the chest and shoulders. The Italian word is generally traced back to the Latin bustum, which originally meant a funeral pyre, a tomb, or a sepulchral monument; the link is that commemorative sculptures of the head and shoulders were set up on such tombs, so the word for the monument drifted to mean the carved upper body itself. From the sculpture sense English readily extended the word to a living person's chest, especially a woman's bosom and its measurement. The informal verb meaning 'to break' is quite separate in feel: it is simply a colloquial respelling of burst, which descends from the Old English berstan meaning to break apart, and over time bust gathered its own slangy uses such as a police raid and being financially ruined. The spelling is short and phonetic, so the only real care needed is keeping it distinct from the unrelated word burst.

How the word is built

• bust (from Italian busto: upper body, torso); the verb sense is a phonetic variant of the older English word burst