Hence, by easy transition from the falseness of padding or puffing out a figure, bombast came to signify swelling pretentiousness of speech and conduct as an adapted meaning; and gradually this became the primary and only sense. * * * * * _Buxom._—This word is simply bow-some or bough-some, _i.e._, that which readily bows, or bends, or yields like the boughs of a tree. No longer ago than when Milton wrote _boughsome_, which as _gh_ in English began to lose its guttural sound,—that of the letter _chi_ in Greek,—came to be written _buxom_, meant simply yielding, and was of general application. ——“and, this once known, shall soon return, And bring ye to the place where thou and Death Shall dwell at ease, and up and down unseen Wing silently the buxom air.”—_Paradise Lost_, II. 840. But aided, doubtless, as Dr. Johnson suggests, by a too liberal construction of the bride’s promise in the old English marriage ceremony, to be “obedient and buxom in bed and board,” it came to be applied to women who were erroneously thought likely to be thus yielding; and hence it now means plump, rosy, alluring, and is applied only to women who combine those qualities of figure, face and expression. * * * * * _Cadaver._—An abbot of Cirencester, about 1216, conceived himself an etymologist, and, as a specimen of his powers, has left us the Latin word cadaver, a corpse, thus dissected:—“Ca,” quoth he, is abbreviated for caro; “da” for data; “ver” for vermibus. Hence we have “caro data vermibus,” flesh given to the worms. Yet while the reader smiles at this curious absurdity, it is worth while to note that the word _alms_ is constructed upon a similar principle, being formed (according to the best authority) of letters, taken from successive syllables of the cumbrous Latinized Greek word _eleemosyna_. * * * * *