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<span>A hollow, but also a hump: French "bosse" means hump. </span></div>
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<span>In English, "to emboss" is "<span style="display: inline !important; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Georgia,Times,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 1.23em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.35"><font face="Calibri,Helvetica,sans-serif" size="3">t</font></span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: normal; font-weight: normal; display: inline !important; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Calibri,Helvetica,sans-serif">o
cause to bulge or swell out, make convex or protuberant" (OED online).</font></span></span></div>
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<span>Hilary Clark<br>
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<div id="divRplyFwdMsg" dir="ltr"><font color="#000000" face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size:11pt"><b>From:</b> Vwoolf <vwoolf-bounces@lists.osu.edu> on behalf of Jeremy Hawthorn via Vwoolf <vwoolf@lists.osu.edu><br>
<b>Sent:</b> 22 April 2020 05:43<br>
<b>To:</b> vwoolf <vwoolf@lists.osu.edu><br>
<b>Subject:</b> [Vwoolf] boss of the back</font>
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<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;">My colleague Laurence Davies, co-editor of Conrad's Collected Letters and amazingly well informed about almost everything, writes this:</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;">"Could boss mean the small of the back? According to the Scots Dialect Dictionary (ed Alexander Warrock), the noun 'boss' can denote a hollow. (The online OED records this usage as a Scoticism -- sense 10 -- but
records it as an adjective.)"</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;">Did Woolf have anyone in her circle of friends who might make use a Scottish expression / term?</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;">This seems the most promising lead so far for the
<i>Jacob's Room</i> puzzle.</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;">Jeremy H<br>
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<pre class="x_moz-signature" cols="72">--
Jeremy Hawthorn
Emeritus Professor
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
7491 Trondheim
Norway</pre>
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