Green’s Dictionary of Slang

drunk, looking drunken.

1517		Skelton Elynour Rummynge line 17: Droupy and drowsy, Scurvy and lowsy; Her face all bowsy.
1592		Greene Quip for an Upstart Courtier D3: He is, sir, to be breefe, a bowsie bawdie miser, good for none but himselfe and his trugge.
1603		H. Crosse Vertues Common-wealth n.p.: A bowsie beastly drunkard.
1610		Rowlands Martin Mark-all 14: A bowsie bawdie miser.
1621		Jonson Masque of the Gipsies in Q. Horatius Flaccus (1640) 90: You must be beane-bowsy, / And sleepy and drouzy, / And lazy and louzy.
1688		T. Shadwell Squire of Alsatia n.p.: Cant List: Bowsy. Drunk.
1693		Dryden Juvenal XVI 201: That judge is hot, and doffs his gown, while this / O’er night was bowsy, and goes out to piss.
c.1698		B.E. Dict. Canting Crew.
1749		H. Fitzcotton (trans.) Homer’s Iliad 40: Till he and Juno, being bowsy, / Yawn’d, time about, and grew quite drowsy.