a. and sb. [f. prec. + -AN. The transferred senses are taken from French, in which bohême, bohémien, have been applied to the gipsies, since their first appearance in the 15th c., because they were thought to come from Bohemia, or perhaps actually entered the West through that country. Thence, in modern French, the word has been transferred to ‘vagabond, adventurer, person of irregular life or habits,’ a sense introduced into Eng. by Thackeray.]
A. sb.
1. A native of Bohemia.
1603. Shaks., Meas. for M., IV. ii. 134. A Bohemian borne: But here nurst vp & bred.
1845. Sarah Austin, Ranke’s Hist. Ref., II. 469. He acceded to the demand of the Bohemians.
b. A follower of John Huss, a Bohemian Protestant or Hussite.
1579. Fulke, Heskins’ Parl., 189. The Bohemians vsed this text, to proue the communion in both kindes.
2. A gipsy. [F. bohême, bohémien.]
1696. Phillips, Bohemians, the same with Gypsies, Vagabonds that strowl about the Country.
1823. Scott, Quentin D., xvi. I am a Zingaro, a Bohemian, an Egyptian, or whatever the Europeans … may choose to call me; but I have no country.
1841. Borrow, Gipsies of Spain (1843), I. 38. I arrived at the resting place of ‘certain Bohemians’ by whom I was received with kindness.
3. A gipsy of society; one who either cuts himself off, or is by his habits cut off, from society for which he is otherwise fitted; especially an artist, literary man, or actor, who leads a free, vagabond, or irregular life, not being particular as to the society he frequents, and despising conventionalities generally. (Used with considerable latitude, with or without reference to morals.)
1848. Thackeray, Van. Fair, lxiv. She was of a wild, roving nature, inherited from father and mother, who were both Bohemians, by taste and circumstances.
1862. Westm. Rev., July & Oct., 32–33. The term ‘Bohemian’ has come to be very commonly accepted in our day as the description of a certain kind of literary gipsey, no matter in what language he speaks, or what city he inhabits…. A Bohemian is simply an artist or littérateur who, consciously or unconsciously, secedes from conventionality in life and in art.
1865. Cornh. Mag., Feb., 241. There are many blackguards who are Bohemians, but it does not at all follow that every Bohemian is a blackguard.
1875. Emerson, Lett. & Soc. Aims, x. 256. In persons open to the suspicion of irregular and immoral living,—in Bohemians.
4. Comb., as Bohemian-like.
1886. Cyclists Tour. Club Handbk., April, 5. The Bohemian-like contempt he harbours for all conventionalities.
B. adj. 1. Of or belonging to Bohemia.
2. Of or pertaining to the gipsies.
1848. Thackeray, Van. Fair, lxv. The band of renowned Bohemian Vaulters and tumblers.
3. Of, or characteristic of, social Bohemians.
1861. Thackeray, Adv. Philip, v. in Cornh. Mag., Feb., 186. Having … only lately quitted the Bohemian land.
1865. Trollope, Belton Est., i. 3. The young man commenced Bohemian life in London.
1881. Saintsbury, Dryden, 105. Smith, the Bohemian author of Phaedra and Hippolytus.
4. Comb., as Bohemian chatterer, or waxwing, a bird of passage visiting Great Britain (Ampelis or Bombycilla garrula); Bohemian glass, a fine kind of glass, originally made in Bohemia, in which potash is the alkali used.
1722. Barrington, in Phil. Trans., LXII. 316. I always conceived the Bohemian chatterer was not observed in Great Britain but at very distant intervals of years.
1841. Proc. Berw. Nat. Club., I. 252. That beautiful member of the Ampelidæ, the Bohemian waxwing (Bombycilla garrula).
1854. J. Scoffern, in Orr’s Circ. Sc., Chem. 433. Potash glass is less subject to crack … Bohemian glass is of this kind.
