buster

1) Anything large in size; a man of great strength. A common vulgarism, which appears to be of foreign origin.

Dr. Jamieson, in his Scottish Dictionary, has the word bustuous, busteous, huge, large in size; also, strong, powerful; which is the same meaning usually understood by our vulgar word buster.

The same time sendis sche

Down to the folkis at the cost of the se,

Twenty fed oxin, large, grete, and fyne,

And one hundreth busteous boukes of swyne.--Douglas, Virgil, 33, 8.

We sometimes hear this word applied to a gale of wind, as, "This is a buster," i. e. a powerful or heavy wind. In the old Scottish poems there are examples of a similar use of the word.

That terrible trumpet, I hear tel,

Beis hard in Ileavin, in eirth and hel;

Those that were drownit in the sey,

That busteous blast they sal obey.--Lindsay's Works, 1592, p. 167.

The Icelandic bostra, great noise, seems to be analagous to the word.

2) or bust. A frolic, a spree. "They were on a buster, and were taken up by the police."