Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (Aus./N.Z.) good, also adv.

1902		Sydney Sportsman 14 May 8/5: Jack sent a bosker right onto the short rib, and Starlight gasped.
1904		Sydney Sportsman (Surry Hills, NSW) 16 Mar. 1/1: [headline] A Bosker Boss.
1904		Sydney Sportsman 20 Jan. 7/3: M’Beth, with a bosker leg glance, a bon-todger drive and two singles, just snatched double figures before he was given out leg before.
1905		Sun. Sun (Sydney) 30 July 4/4: ‘There’s one thing, they’ve got some boska girls singin’ an’ darncin’, ain’t they?’.
1906		Coburg Leader (Vic.) 3 Mar. 3/4: Never mind, Jack; there is a boscar time coming.
1906		Otago Witness 2 May 79: [O]ur annual group-taking, and [...] our extra-special debate, which is going to be a ‘boshker’ controversy, are all fast drawing nigh.
1906		Eve. Post (Wellington) 3 Dec. 8: Biggs - ‘Hello, Diggs! Back from Christchurch? Had boncer time, eh?’ Diggs - ‘Oh, bosca time, but I fell in?’.
1907		Maitland Dly Mercury (NSW) 11 Jan. 2/3: A lady from Wanganui thinks that the Exhibition is ‘a bit of orl right,’ a Dunedin lady says that it is ‘a snorter, boshker,’ another Dunedin lady says that it is ‘very decent.
1907		Eve. Post (Wellington 19 Jan. 3: That ugly word ‘bosca,’ which is not yet accepted by professors of English, and has yet no definite form, appears in several guises - bosko, boshker, boshta, bosca.
1907		Maitland Dly Mercury (NSW) 11 Jan. 2/3: Other expressions dotted over the pages are: ‘A snorter,’ ‘not half bad,’ ‘not so rusty,’ ‘bosko,’ ‘bosca,’ ‘O.K.,’‘A1,’ [etc].
1908		Truth (Wellington) 2 May 2/5: The little peach with the bosker blue eyes.
1909		N.Z. Truth (Wellington) Jan. 5 n.p.: ‘Silver’ Bryant: ‘Boshker.’ Bob Turner: ‘Blime, he did it, didn’t he?’.
1909		Wyalong Advocate (NSW) 23 Jan. 4/2: And then he saw, upon the floor / A Bosker big ‘Wild Cat’ oh!
1909		Free Lamce (Wellington) 30 oct. 12: ‘Them bloomin’ movin’ pickshers is bosker!’ said Bill.
1911		Ashburton Guardian (NZ) 4 Apr. 2/5: [advt.] Teddy came home late from school, / Gave a horrid sneeze / [...] / Mother gave him Woods’ Great Peppermint Cure / ‘Bosker stuff!’ said ted.
1913		Newsletter (Sydney) 20 Dec. 2/5: With twenty-five American artists, all specially imported from the land of wooden nutmegs [...] the programme is simply Boshker, with something to spare.
1914		Truth (Melbourne) 31 Jan. 6/1: Boskerino! Cush, and all sigarnio, my oath!
1915		Aus. Worker (Sydney) 6 May 17/3: The best bacon, the sublimest soap, the boskerest beer, the wonderfullest whisky [etc].
1915		Samoanische Zeitung (Samoa) 8 May 4: ‘A boscer big joocey pineapple, and ’eaps of other fruit’.
1917		Rising Sun 4 Jan. 1/2: ‘Yes,’ added the out-backer, ‘’Tis a bosker band all right, but they ’ad that blanky tune at the Tiv’ in Bourke Street before we ever come over here.’.
1917		Chronicles of the N.Z.E.F. (London) 5 Sept. 28/1: ‘Why, he was the greatest ‘swi-up’ king in the ‘Inverteds,’ and he used to give the vin rouge a boscar lash to leg in the old Diggers Rest Estaminet’.
1917		Truth (Wellington) 13 Oct 5/7: Mine host of the Albert is known as a ‘sport’ [...] He’s a dinkum good fellow, and a bosker good friend.
1918		Digger (France) 19 Jan. 1/3: No truer word than this we’ve spoke, / That Genreal Pau’s a bosker bloke; / And bosker is your speeches’ flow, / And boskerino d’Andre’s mo!
1919		C.H. Thorp Handful of Ausseys 296: With his bayonet point at the charge, ‘Come on Ausseys!’ he yelled joyfully, ‘Come on, you loves, an’ stick ’em, you boshker boys!’.
1919		Maryborough Chron. (Qld) 1 Jan. 4/3: He claims the word ‘bosker’ as good French, only he spells it differently – ‘beau que ca’.
1920		Age (Queanbeyan, NSW) 10 Dec. 22/5: He is a bosker tradesman and cusotmers can rely on receiving the best attention from him.
1928		Sun (Sydney) 27 Apr. 10/3: ‘The Carillon,’ said Sir Mungo, ‘Is the best and boskerest and most astounding of its kind in all the world. Avaunt, fellow!’.
1930		Auckland Star 16 Aug. supp. 2: He pinched me dame, me lady lass, / Me bosker little flapper.
1932		M. Franklin Old Blastus of Bandicoot 96: ‘Well, Father, ain’t that a bosker handkerchief?’.
1932		Mercury (Hobart) 28 May 13/2: Steele Rudd and his disciples evolved a school which thrived on mulgas, drought, and the love affairs of outback morons, ‘Boshka,’ crowded every other adjective off the page, while the Stock Exchange quotation for ‘Cripes’ was fourpence a gross and no takers.
1934		N.Z. Herald (Auckland) 3 Apr. 10: When the red and yellow macaw hung head downward from the wires and swore hoarsely in parrot language [...] he said it was ‘bosker’.
1940		F. Sargeson ‘Cow-pats’ in A Man And His Wife (1944) 22: He stuck them into a cow-pat that had just been dropped, and he said it made his feet feel bosker and warm.
1944		L. Glassop We Were the Rats 13: It’s bosker of you to take me to the dance. We haven’t been out together for ages.
1950		Argus (Melbourne) 2 Sept. 48/2: We played pirates and had a bosker time.
1951		D. Stivens Jimmy Brockett 61: The automobile looked bosker to me.
1953		Bulletin (Sydney) 7 Oct 8/1: La Tosca, La Tosco, you’re beautiful, you’re boscar.
1954		T.A.G. Hungerford Sowers of the Wind 45: ‘I’m getting a bosker headache’.
1959		G. Hamilton Summer Glare 53: Gee, it’s bosker, ain’t it?
1965		J. Wynnum Jiggin’ in the Riggin’ 113: ‘You’re not putting me off at all,’ said Carter. ‘It still sounds bosker to me’.
1988		McGill Dict. of Kiwi Sl. 17/2: bonzer excellent, most pleasing, attractive; possibly imported with goldrushes, from Spanish ‘bonanza’; aka [...] boshter, bosker.
1996		J. Byrell Lairs, Urgers and Coat-Tuggers 55: In fact it was none other than an old hometown adversary in Detective Sergeant Clyde ‘Bosker’ Boskins from Darlinghurst police.
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. [as cit. 1988].
2004		J. Lambert Maquarie Dict. Aus. Sl. 26/1: bosker: obsolete term equivalent to bonzer (see entry).

2. healthy, ‘good for’.

1906

Age (Queanbeyan, NSW) 4 May n.p.: Dr Waugh’s Baking Powder makes Pastry [...] ‘light as air’ and by its use is proved to be wholesome, ‘bosker,’ and in every way [...] most desirable.