Bosses

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A set of individuals with control over the work and performance of others in a corporate context
2. People who hold positions of leadership and supervise others in an organization
3. Individuals entrusted with directing and managing staff within a company or group

Etymology: The word "boss" in its management sense comes from a surprisingly tender beginning. In Dutch, "baas" was a respectful word for an older relative, an uncle or kinsman, and it is related to words for father and to the English "babe" and "boy." Dutch settlers carried it to New Amsterdam, where it gradually came to mean the person in charge of a workplace who was not the owner or master of the household, and English speakers borrowed it from that colonial Dutch usage. A second, unrelated strand of English "boss" is far older. Middle English "bos" or "boce" meant a lump, bulge, or knot, coming from Old French "boce" and ultimately from a Germanic word meaning "to hit." That sense of a raised knob is the same one behind the protruding centre of a shield or the decorative knob on a carving, and it is a doublet of "beat." Only the managerial sense is relevant to the plural "bosses," which is simply the regular plural of that noun.

Synonyms: supervisors, managers, leaders

Antonyms: subordinates, employees