BUSKIN • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Buskin

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noun

Buskin n.

A strong, protecting covering for the foot, coming some distance up the leg. "The hunted red deer's undressed hide Their hairy buskins well supplied."

A similar covering for the foot and leg, made with very thick soles, to give an appearance of elevation to the stature; worn by tragic actors in ancient Greece and Rome. Used as a symbol of tragedy, or the tragic drama, as distinguished from comedy. "Great Fletcher never treads in buskins here, No greater Jonson dares in socks appear."

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Etymology of 'Buskin'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Buskin" Quotes from Famous Books

... Twiford; Disney, Contentious Surley; Mr. Q., Spywell; Mrs. Merchant, Petulant Easy; Mrs. Bates, Emilia. The Nursery disappears about 1686. Certainly in 1690 it was the custom for young aspirants to the sock and buskin to join the regular ...

— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn

... passable as strolling players, with the exception of the actor who personated Osmyn. This was a young man named Bury, of respectable parentage and education, it was said, and considerable reputation, though his aspiring buskin had never yet trod the London boards. He was a handsome, shapely person, with an assured, dashing manner, and a great amount of spirit and fire, which usually passed with his audience, and always with ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... their ballads, and take out their handkerchiefs." More tears, we learn, were shed over this 'homespun drama' than at all the imitations of ancient fables by learned moderns. To Fielding this revolution, from the buskin'd heroics of the Alexanders and Clelias to the living and natural pathos of the tragedy of a poor London apprentice, must have appealed with extraordinary force; for it is the especial glory of his own genius that, throwing aside all ...

— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden

... were of a kind to be spared a Greek, even one who may not cover his instep with the embroidered buskin ...

— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... then; though with such a February night on one side, it takes all your power on the other to draw me out of this chair. You don't look much like Comedy, and I am very little like the great buskin-wearer—but I would as lieve Tragedy had me by the other shoulder as February, when his fingers have been so very long away from the fire. Did you ever read Thomson's 'Castle of ...

— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner

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