Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. syphilis; (although cits. c.1550, 1568, 1596 may refer only to lit. worms).

1513		Skelton Agaynst The Scottes 170: Of the out iles the rough-foted Scottes, We have well eased them of the bottes.
c.1550		T. Ingelend Disobedient Child Eii: I haue this daye fylled so many Pottes With all maner wyne, Ale, and Beere: That I wyshed their bealyes full of Bottes.
1568		Hist. of Jacob and Esau I i: He hath either some wormes or bottes in his braine.
1596		Nashe Have With You to Saffron-Walden in Works III (1883–4) 15: They are the very botts & glanders to the gentle Readers, the dead Palsie and Apoplexie of the Presse.
1604		Dekker Honest Whore Pt 1 IV iii: Who the pox should come along with you but Bots?
c.1614		Beaumont & Fletcher Bonduca V ii: I have the bots, by — [...] A – upon the bots, the love-bots.
1621		Fletcher Island Princess III i: Mine uncle haunts me up and down, looks melancholy [...] and groans, as if he had the Bots.
1685		‘A Canto upon the Miraculous Cure of the K’s Evil’ in Ebsworth Bagford Ballads II (1878) 800: So to his Grace of M[onmouth] trots, A Filly Fole that had the Bots.

2. as an oath.

1584		Three Ladies of London II: A bottes on thy motley beard, I know thee, thou art Dissimulation.
1593		Nashe Four Letters Confuted in Works II (1883–4) 271: A bots on thee for mee for a lumpish, leaden heeld letter dawber.
1606		Wily Beguiled 22: Faith I ha been in a faire taking, for you, a bots on you.
1632		R. Brome Covent-Garden Weeded I i: A botts on’t, I never saw the Mountebanks Wife.
1639		Ford Lady’s Trial III i: A bots on empty purses!
1651		T. Randolph Hey for Honesty II v: They zay one gaffer Aristotle was the first vounder of it, a bots on him!
1664		W. Killigrew Pandora Act I: Botts on thy slippery heels; we are undone!

3. (also batts, botts) a general sense of physical unease.

1787		Burns Death and Dr. Hornbook in Works (1842) 15: A countra laird had ta’en the batts, Or some curmurring in his guts.
1816		W. Scott Old Mortality in Waverley II (1855) 407: I ne’er gat ony gude by his doctrine, as ye ca’t, but a sour fit o’ the batts wi’ sitting amang the wet moss-hays for four hours at a yoking.
1883		Sweet & Knox On a Mexican Mustang, Through Texas 609: A cure for bots.
1981		Eble Campus Sl. Fall 2: the botts – the creeps: That criminal’s picture gave me the botts.

4. (US, also botts) depression.

1908		Eve. Star (Wash., DC) 6 Sept. 25/1: ‘Your sick of them [i.e. an enemy], you moist water color of a trooper!’ [...] ‘You’ve got bots, Sergeant [...]’ the youth replied gravely.
1908		L.W. Payne Jr ‘Word-List From East Alabama’ in DN III:iv 293: bots, n. [...] 2. The blues.
1958		H. Ellison Web of the City (1983) 63: What’s a’ matter? You got the botts or somethin’?