Also boquet. [a. Fr. bouquet orig. ‘little wood’ cognate with Pr. bosquet, It boschetto dim. of bosco wood. cf. BUSKET.]
1. A bunch of flowers, a nosegay; also fig.
1716–8. Lady M. W. Montague, Lett., I. xxxii. 111. A large bouquet of jewels, made like natural flowers.
1768. Sterne, Sent. Journ. (1778), II. 144. He had wrapt [paper] round the stalks of a bouquet to keep it together.
1791. T. Warton, Notes on Milton (ed. 2), 181 (L.). May buskets…. If busket be not there the French bouquet, now become English.
1791. Burke, Corr. (1844), III. 278. The flowers … I … had seen … tied up in one bouquet.
a. 1845. Hood, Sniffing a Birthd., x. No flowery garlands—no bouquet.
1880. O. W. Holmes, in Scribner’s Mag., XXI. 157. I’m a florist in verse and what would people say If I came to a banquet without my bouquet? [Cf. Fr. sense, ‘petite pièce de vers pour une fête.’]
2. The perfume exhaled from wine.
1846. French Dom. Cookery, 320. Negligence in the filling of the casks, or permitting the contact of air with the wine, will destroy the bouquet.
c. 1865. in Circ. Sc., I. 353/1. The perfume, or ‘bouquet,’ is something different from the odour of wine.
1873. Lytton, K. Chillingly, IV. vii. Lifting his glass to his lips, [he] voluptuously inhaled its bouquet.
1876. Bartholow, Mat. Med. (1879), 350. Bouquet is that quality of wine which salutes the nose.
3. transf. a. A bunch of flavoring herbs. b. A large flight of rockets, as the close of a firework display. c. The flight of a multitude of pheasants breaking covert from the central point at which the beaters meet; this central spot itself.
1846. French Dom. Cookery, 41. A garnished bouquet is when thyme, fennel, and bay are added to the parsley and onions.
1875. ‘Stonehenge,’ Brit. Sports, I. I. vii. § 4. 104. The shooters are now collected to the spot to which all the beaters congregate, termed the bouquet.
1879. Times, 2 June, 8/1. The great bouquet of rockets being particularly fine.
