Chapter Bosh to Boucan of B by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

it.
   Never venture all in one bottom - i.e. one ship. “Do not put all your eggs into one basket.”

“My ventures are not in one bottom trusted.”- Shakespeare: Merchant of Venice, i. 1.

   To have no bottom. To be unfathomable.
   To get to the bottom of the matter. To ascertain the entire truth; to bolt a matter to its bran.
   To stand on one's own bottom. To be independent. “Every tub must stand on its own bottom.”
   To touch bottom. To reach the lowest depth.
   A horse of good bottom means of good stamina, good foundation.

Bottom (Nick ), the weaver. A man who fancies he can do everything, and do it better than anyone else. Shakespeare has drawn him as profoundly ignorant, brawny, mock heroic, and with an overflow of self-conceit. He is in one part of Midsummer Night's Dream represented with an ass's head, and Titania, queen of the fairies, under a spell, caresses him as an Adonis.
    The name is very appropriate, as the word bottom means a ball of thread used in weaving, etc. Thus in Clark's Heraldry we read, “The coat of Badland is argent, three bottoms in fess gules, the thread or. ”

“When Goldsmith, jealous of the attention which a dancing monkey attracted, said, `I can do that,' he was but playing Bottom.”- R. G. White.

Bottomless The bottomless pit. An allusion to William Pitt, who was remarkably thin.

Botty Conceited. The frog that tried to look as big as an ox was a “botty” frog (Norfolk ). A similar word is “swell,” though not identical in meaning. “Bumpkin” and “bumptious” are of similar construction. (Welsh, bot, a round body, our bottle; both, the boss of a shield; bothel, a rotundity.)

Boucan Donner un boucan. To give a dance. Boucan or Bocan was a musician and dancing master in the middle of the seventeenth century. He was alive in 1645.

“Thibaut se dit estre Mercure,
Et Porgueilleux Colin nous jure
Qu'il est aussi bien Apollon
Que Boccan est bon violon.”
Sieur de St. Amant (1661).

“Les musiciens qui jouent au ballet du roi sont appelés `disciples de Bocan.' ”- Histoire Comique de Francion (1635).