Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US) excellent, wonderful, very enjoyable; also as adv.

1905		Salt Lake Trib. (UT) 28 May 4/1: F. Clarke, who plays such bodacious ball for the Pirates, is a mighty killer of the furry game.
1907		Chicago Daily Trib. 6 May 6/1: Overall was good, so was the descendant of kings, and the fielding was bodacious if anybody knows what that means.
1976		CBer’s Handy Atlas/Dictionary 12/1: bodacious - Extremely strong, as in reference to an incoming signal.
1985		Eble Campus Sl. Oct. 2: bodacious – a lot of fun, interchangeable with hellacious.
1986		S. King It (1987) 460: They played bodacious.
1995		L. Stavsky et al. A2Z 9/2: bodacious – extremely cool: He be flippin’ bodacious rhymes.
2001		Guardian G2 3 Aug. 3: Bodashes, eh? Right.
2011		Dly Record (Morristown, NJ) 5 June 39: [Off] to the taco stand for a ‘bodacious’ burrito.

2. (US) audacious, unceremonious, insolent.

1845		W.T. Thompson Chronicles of Pineville 167: Then there was a kick or two and a blow with the frying-pan – ‘take that, you bowdacious fool’.
1892		W. Kansas World (KS) 20 Feb. 5/1: If you chanced to laugh at him or doubt the smallest part of his bodacious anecdotes it almost broke his heart.
1896		Eve. Star (DC) 20 Oct. 11/1: But while he wuz somewhat bardacious, I don’t think he left us puppusly.
1907		D. Stewart Shadows of the Night in Illus. Police News 22 June 12/1: But, mind, the dodge ain’t up to nuffin, without you’ve done something howdacious [sic].
1908		L.W. Payne Jr ‘Word-List From East Alabama’ in DN III:iv 292: bodacious, adj. Bold, unceremonious, outright.
1908		Ocala Eve. Star (FL) 29 Jan. 4/2: Sum sinners is bodacious an’ fir ‘ligeon da don’t care.
1913		Iron Co. Register (MO) 14 Aug. 8/1: I calls dis yuh mule Politician uh-kaze de minute yo’ takes yo’ eye off’n de bodacious scoun’el right den he’s into devilbent.
1935		Hammond (IN) Times 5 Nov. 1/7: If there’s anyone in Hammond who can take it, it’s Bill Prater, debonair theater usher and bodacious bridegroom of four days.
1953		Randolph & Wilson Down in the Holler 228: bodacious: adj. Outright, bold, brazen.
1968		J. Colebrook Cross of Lassitude 49: Well, don’t you be bodacious!
1994		N. McCall Makes Me Wanna Holler (1995) 76: There were some cats who were so bodacious that they even took on cops.
2002		‘Touré’ Portable Promised Land (ms.) 115: The bodacious, predatorily sexual lick lip.
2022		J. Hannaham Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit 56: The bodacious little chanteuse.

3. (US) substantial, used in concrete or abstract sense.

1907		Chicago Daily Trib. 20 Aug. 7/2: No wonder the heavens cracked open and the rain descended in bodacious torrents.
1971		T. Whitmore Memphis-Nam-Sweden 170: He had the biggest, most ‘bodacious’ hands I’d ever seen.
2004		N. Kelley ‘The Code’ in Brooklyn Noir 177: A chronicle of gunz, bitchez, and bodacious niggatude.

4. (US campus) of a young woman, attractive, esp. possessed of large breasts.

1936		Hammond (IN) Times 31 Jan. 1/2: Charles Esola, the youthful assistant city attorney, is being kidded about the increase in his harem. Five more bodacious females will aid him in the city ordinance codification.
1983		Eble Campus Sl. Nov. 1: bodacious – tremendous, fantastic. Used mainly by males to comment on parts of the female anatomy.
1992		D. Burke Street Talk 2 52: A bodacious babe.
2002		(con. 1980s) i80s.com 🌐 bodacious An 80’s guy’s way to describe a woman who had a beautiful body. She is bodacious with gnarly ta-tas.