Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A round mass: "A dense bolus of trapped dolphins fills the frame” ( Kenneth Browser).
- n. A single, relatively large quantity of a substance, such as a dose of a drug, intended for therapeutic use and taken orally.
- n. A concentrated mass of a substance administered intravenously for diagnostic or therapeutic purposes.
- n. A soft mass of chewed food within the mouth or alimentary canal.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A soft round mass of anything medicinal, larger than an ordinary pill, to be swallowed at once.
- n. Figuratively, anything disagreeable, as an unpalatable doctrine or argument, that has to be accepted or tolerated.
Wiktionary
- n. a round mass of something, especially of chewed food in the mouth or alimentary canal
- n. a single, large dose of a drug, especially one in that form
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A rounded mass of anything, esp. a large pill.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a small round soft mass (as of chewed food)
- n. a large pill; used especially in veterinary medicine
Etymologies
- Medieval Latin bōlus, from Greek bōlos, lump of earth.
Examples
“In reading messages I see the word bolus or something like that.”
“In gray matter, the labelled bolus is dispersed within three main compartments during image acquisition: the intravascular compartment; intracellular tissue space; and the extracellular tissue space.”
“The weapon is called the bolus, and flying through the air it encircles the legs of the guana, bringing it to the earth.”
“While it is possible children are more vulnerable in Africa because of malnutrition and the severity of diseases such as malaria, doctors say there is no clear reason why an injection of a large amount of fluid through a 15-minute drip - known as a bolus - would be more dangerous in Africa than in Europe.”
“When swallowing a bolus, which is a chunk of chewed food, it causes the esophagus to be stretched.”
“After mastication, the food is worked by the tongue and cheeks into a saliva-soaked "bolus" and swallowed.”
“Or, for dessert, a new bolus of legislation, all the parliamentary sewage flushed into one, a bill so heinous it will make it impossible even for Israel's best friends to defend Israel as a democracy, so extreme it will remove every remaining moral obstruction to branding Israel outright apartheid.”
The Huffington Post: Bradley Burston: In an Israel Reborn, a Glimpse of a New Israeli
“There was no escaping other people's skin in that cramped bolus of walkers, tripping over each other's legs.”
“She was given a rapid intravenous bolus of normal saline and was admitted to the medical intensive care unit.”
“There are several types of insulin (rapid-, short-, intermediate-, and long-acting) and regimes (basal/bolus through pump or multiple injections) appropriate for different patients in different circumstances.”
The Huffington Post: Dinkar Jain: Challenges of Juvenile Diabetes in India
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘bolus’.
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The Whole Ball of Wax
Feel free to wax poetic.
the whole ball of..., wax poetic, wax, beeswax, ambergris, cedar waxwing, sealing wax, earwax, paraffin, bougie, epicuticular wax, waxing gibbous moon and 192 more...
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Open List: Sheepishness
Everything sheep, from Artiodactyla to zodiac.
lanolin, ram, ewe, Artiodactyla, even-toed ungulate, ruminant, Ovis aries, ovine, domestic, domesticated, neotenic, mouflon and 390 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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Words that should be heard in songs more often
Inspired by PossibleUnderscore's list of words overused in modern pop music.
giant squid, bamboo, colonic, herbivore, raptor, dodecahedron, largesse, sinuses, dim sum, carburetor, transubstantiation, wife and 54 more...
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Medical terms or linguistic terms?
That's a terrible ablative case. Get me some morpheme, stet!
stet, stat, morpheme, morphine, ablative case, salmonella, morphology, nephrology, alethic modality, anaphoric clitic, bolus, hyperbole and 23 more...
john “On the one hand, they said, the new president’s apparent enthusiasm for science, and the concomitant rise of ‘geek chic’ and ‘smart is the new cool’ memes, can only redound to the benefit of all scientists, particularly if the enthusiasm is followed by a bolus of new research funds.�?
The New York Times, In ‘Geek Chic’ and Obama, New Hope for Lifting Women in Science , by Natalie Angier, January 19, 2009 Jan 20, 2009
kirinqueen Also used by type 1 diabetics who use insulin pumps, to describe a dose of insulin given to correct a high blood sugar or to account for the carbohydrates in a meal. May be used as a verb as noted by adoarns, e.g., "My blood sugar was a little high, so I bolused for that, and I'm having pizza for lunch, so I'll have to take another bolus pretty soon." Jun 19, 2008
adoarns Most often used by house officers to mean either a fluid bolus, which is a rapid infusion of some fluid, for instance saline, usu. made to improve blood pressure or replete lost water, or a drug bolus, which is a big, all-at-once starting dose of a drug that builds up blood levels quickly so that you can get clinical effects without waiting for several doses to go in.
Can also be used as a verb: "Mrs Shalhoub's BP dipped, so I bolused her." Jan 26, 2008
bilby "Artefacts have also surfaced, making suggestions about how people lived in Nuvuk. Here, a body holds an ulu, a traditional knife used for taking blubber from whale carcasses; there, a grave gives up weights from a bolus which would have been used to hunt birds."
- 'Bodies Point To Alaska's Past', Richard Black, BBC website 31 Dec 2007. Jan 1, 2008