Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(UK Und.) drunken.

c.1535		R. Copland Hye way to the Spyttel House Eiii: Come none of these pedlers this way also, / With pak on bak, with theyr bousy speche / Jagged and ragged with broken hose and breche.
1545		J. Skelton Bokes n.p.: Droupy and drowsy / Scuruy and lowsy / Her face all bowsy.
1592		Greene Quip for an Upstart Courtier C3: He is (sir) to bee breefe a bowsie bawdy miser, good for none but himselfe and his trug .
1603		H. Crosse Vertues common-vvealth n.p.: [H]e deserueth no other epithite then a bowsie beastly drunkard.
1608		Dekker Lanthorne and Candle-Light Ch. 1: Enough – with bowsy Coue maund Nace, / Tour the Patring Coue in the Darkeman Case.
1610		Rowlands Martin Mark-all 9: Nicholas Chatbourne, the bowsie bagbearer.
1611		Middleton & Dekker Roaring Girle V i: O I wud lib all the lightmans [...] And couch till a palliard docked my dell, / So my bousy nab might skew rom-bouse well.
1614		B. Jonson Bartholomew fayre 164: And in the meane time, to be greazy, and bouzy, / And nasty, and filthy, and ragged and louzy,.
1640		J. Gower [trans.] Ovid Romane calendar 111: The bouzy guest, deck'd with a film-flower crown, / In drunken garb there dances up and down.
1651		T. Randolph Hey for Honesty 15: Let us be sure Pover[t]y die out-right, I begin to be bowsie in her company.
1661		G. Wharton Select & Choice Poems 26: Victors but once grown bouzy with success, / Dream of nought else, but Gold and Gloriousness.
1683		J. Dunton Informer’s Doom 96: [A] thredbare black coat [...] whereon the Map of Drunkenness was drawn, with the bawdy and bowsie excrements that dropt from his filthy leaking mouth.
1686		T. Jevon Devil of a Wife 20: I am Bouzy and right for mischief; let's execute our design.
1688		Shadwell Squire of Alsatia 12: I was plaguy Bowsy last night with Squire Belfond: We had Fiddles, Whores, Scour'd, broke Windows, beat Watches, and roar'd like Thunder.
1690		D’Urfey New Poems 135: Two buxum young Harlots were drinking with L— / [...] / All fluster’d and bousie / The doting old Sot.
1693		Dryden Juvenal X 202: Drunk, at an Armies Dinner, to the Lees; With a long Legend of Romantick things, Which, in his Cups the Bowsy Poet sings.
1719		A. Smith Lives of Most Notorious Highway-men, etc. (1926) 203: [...] Bowsy, drunk. We bowsed about, that is, we drank hard.
1725		Canter’s Serenade in Farmer Musa Pedestris (1896) 43: Rise, shake off your straw, / And prepare you each maw / To kiss, eat, and drink till youre bouzy.
1770		Gent.’s Mag. 559: To express the condition of an Honest Fellow, and no Flincher, under the Effects of good Fellowship, it is said that he is [...] Bouzey.
1785		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1791		J. Walker Pronouncing Dict. 60/2: Bousy, Drunken.
1796		‘Peter Pindar’ Tristia (1806) 48: In seas of rosy wine, Where rosy Pitt resign’d his boosing breath.
1828		‘Humours of Glasgow Fair’ [broadsheet ballad] Now Willock and Tam, gay and bouzy, / By this time had met with their joes.