bodice
(ˈbɒdɪs)
Forms: 6–7 bodies, 8–9 boddice, 7– bodice.
[A variant of bodies (see body n. 6), retaining the earlier sound of final -s, the original phrase being ‘a pair of bodies’; even with the spelling bodice the word was formerly (like pence, mice, dice, truce) treated as a plural.]
1. Formerly. a. An inner garment for the upper part of the body, quilted and strengthened with whalebone (worn chiefly by women, but also by men); a corset, stays; freq. called a pair of bodies (bodice) = ‘a pair of stays’.
| 1618 Fletcher Loyal Subj. ii. i. 31 If the bones want setting In her old bodies. a 1637 B. Jonson Elegie lx. (1854) 829 The whale-bone man That quilts those bodies I have leave to span. 1674 Grew Anat. Plants v. §3 A Flower without its Empalement, would hang as uncouth and taudry, as a Lady without her Bodies. 1679 Luttrell Brief Rel. (1857) I. 23 Mowbray..having a pair of bodice on, and falling down as if really dead, the assassinate fled. 1706 Lond. Gaz. No. 4196/4 A pair of new blewish Bodice. 1779 Johnson Pope, L.P. (1787) IV. 91 [Pope] was invested in boddice made of stiff canvass, being scarce able to hold himself erect till they were laced. |
b. fig.
| 1732 Fielding Covent Gard. Jrnl. No. 55 His sentiment, when let loose from that stiff boddice in which it is laced. 1855 Macaulay Hist. Eng. xviii. (1872) III. 303/1 It was never..found politic to put trade into straitlaced bodices. |
2. The upper part of a woman's dress, a tight-fitting outer vest or waistcoat, either made in a piece with the skirt or separate (cf. body n.); formerly also, an inner vest worn immediately over the stays.
| 1566–7 Prec. Treas. in Chalmers Mary (1818) I. 207 Of ormaise taffatis to lyne the bodies and sclevis of the goune and vellicote. 1625 Fletcher Fair Maid ii. ii. 35 Nothing but her vpper bodies. 1682 Wheler Journ. Greece i. 64 They wear a Bodies of Red or Green Velvet. 1712 Steele Spect. No. 276 ¶3 He keeps me in a pair of Slippers, neat Bodice, warm Petticoats. 1873 Black Pr. of Thule vii. 98 She wore a tight-fitting bodice of cream-white flannel. |
3. Comb. and attrib., as bodice hand, bodice-maker, bodice-seller.
| 1672 R. Wild Declar. Lib. Consc. 2 A neighbouring Bodies-maker, that whistles a Psalm-tune. 1684 Lond. Gaz. No. 1980/4 Mr. John Nichols Bodice seller at the Falcon on London Bridge. 1701 Ibid. No. 3758/8 At Mr. Cade's, a Bodice-seller. 1758 Johnson Idler No. 40 ¶12 The taylors and boddice-makers of the present age. |
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Sense 3 becomes an ac block. Add: [3.] bodice-ripper colloq., a sexually explicit romantic novel, esp. one in a historical setting with a plot involving the seduction of the heroine; also transf., a film of a similar nature.
| 1980 N.Y. Times (Nexis) 28 Dec. Women..too have their pornography: Harlequin romances, novels of ‘sweet savagery,’ *bodice-rippers. 1981 J. Sutherland Bestsellers vii. 85 The most dramatic innovation in the field of popular women's fiction was the success of ‘hot ones’, ‘bodice rippers’, or ‘sweet and savages’ as they were called. 1984 E. Jong Parachutes & Kisses xii. 208 That scene in bodice-ripper romances where the vulnerable heroine meets the rakehell hero. 1987 Times Lit. Suppl. 17 Apr. 408/3 British cinema belatedly grew up—or so people thought at the time. Out, by and large, went the last traces of the Gainsborough bodice-rippers. 1989 C. D. Geist in Wilson & Ferris Encycl. Southern Culture 863/2 Historic romances in an Old South setting were..similar to the traditional historical romance... By the 1970s the form was referred to as the ‘bodice ripper’ by critics. 1991 Gay Times Jan. 57/4 Replete with interesting details about gay life in the city at that time, this..novel is really a bodice-ripper constrained within a thriller corset. |