- a stone or metal model of a person’s head, shoulders and chest
- a marble bust of Napoleon
- The prime minister unveiled a bust of the former president.
- (used especially when talking about clothes or measurements) a woman’s breasts or the measurement around the breasts and back
- What is your bust measurement, Madam?
- The dress was too big in the bust.
- exercises to tone the bust
Extra ExamplesTopics Bodyc2- Her bust reduced from 40 to 34 inches as a result of her diet.
- The dress is made to fit up to a 40-inch bust.
- a period of economic difficulty in which people and businesses struggle to survive
- Will it be boom or bust for the property market?
- Both the boom and its inevitable bust have been enormously disruptive.
- (informal) an unexpected visit made by the police in order to arrest people for doing something illegal
- a drug bust
- (North American English) a thing that is not good
- As a show it was a bust.
Word Originnoun senses 1 to 2 mid 17th cent. (denoting the upper part or torso of a large sculpture): from French buste, from Italian busto, from Latin bustum ‘tomb, sepulchral monument’. noun sense 3 mid 18th cent. (originally US, as a noun in the sense ‘an act of bursting or splitting’): variant of burst.
Idioms
See bust in the Oxford Advanced American DictionarySee bust in the Oxford Learner's Dictionary of Academic Englishboom and bust
- a situation in which a period of rapid economic growth is followed by one of sudden decline
- High house prices encourage boom and bust and leave the economy vulnerable.
- Amid the inevitable boom and bust cycle, families are facing pay cuts and job losses.
Check pronunciation:
bust