[Vwoolf] boss of the back

[Clark, Hilary]

A hollow, but also a hump: French "bosse" means hump.

In English, "to emboss" is "to cause to bulge or swell out, make convex or protuberant" (OED online).


Hilary Clark

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My colleague Laurence Davies, co-editor of Conrad's Collected Letters and amazingly well informed about almost everything, writes this:

"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.)"

Did Woolf have anyone in her circle of friends who might make use a Scottish expression / term?

This seems the most promising lead so far for the Jacob's Room puzzle.

Jeremy H

--
Jeremy Hawthorn
Emeritus Professor
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
7491 Trondheim
Norway
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