Definition of "buskin" [bus•kin]

• A foot and leg covering reaching halfway to the knee, resembling a laced half boot. (noun)
• A thick-soled laced half boot worn by actors of Greek and Roman tragedies. (noun)
• Tragedy, especially that which resembles a Greek tragedy. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "I remembered Horace's 'Praecipe lugubres cantus, Melpomene,' and Cowley's 'I called the buskin'd muse Melpomene and told her what sad story I would write,' and suggested Melpomene, or Penthos: Melpomene was adopted. ”"
• "But, apart from the soldiers, neither sex wore any head covering, their thick hair seeming to afford them all the protection needed from the fierce rays of the vertical sun; but both sexes wore a kind of buskin of soft leather reaching to just below the knee, the sole consisting of a shaped piece of thick hide stitched on to the under part of the buskin."
• "Pierre le grand: Or, "The poker chip" and "The buskin," Bacchus, and Aphrodite (not Venus), Comus, and Momus: exalting natural virtues and rebuking hypocracy both in church and state by J. W Rogers"