bust: There are two different words bust in English. The one meaning ‘break’ [18] is simply an alteration of burst. Bust ‘sculpture of head and chest’ [17] comes via French buste from Italian busto ‘upper body’, of uncertain origin (Latin had the temptingly similar bustum ‘monument on a tomb’, but this does not seem to fit in with the word’s primary sense ‘upper body’).
In English, application of the word to the human chest probably developed in the 18th century (one of the earliest examples is from Byron’s Don Juan 1819: ‘There was an Irish lady, to whose bust I ne’er saw justice done’), although as late as the early 19th century it could still be used with reference to men’s chests, and had not become particularized to female breasts: ‘His naked bust would have furnished a model for a statuary’, Washington Irving, A tour on the prairies 1835.
