Buxom means plump and full-figured, said of a woman. A buxom landlady, buxom and cheerful, buxom figure.
It is dated and it appraises a woman's body, so it reads badly in modern writing outside historical fiction. Its history is remarkable: it meant obedient in Old English, from a root meaning bendable, then cheerful, then healthy, then this.
1adjectivebuxomPlump and full-figured, said of a woman.
“The innkeeper was a buxom, cheerful woman in a white apron.”
buxom is a quality of figure.
Old English buhsum means bendable or obedient, from bugan, to bow. The sense moved through cheerful and healthy to the modern one.
Proto-West Germanic
*beuhsam
Old English
bōcsum
Middle English
buxom
English, today
buxom
Built from
From Middle English buxom, also ibucsum, ibuhsum (“bendsome, flexible, pliant, obedient”), from Old English bōcsum, būhsum, ġebūhsum (“bendsome, pliant, obedient”), from Proto-West Germanic beuhsam, beugsam, equivalent to bow + -some or buck + -some. Cognate with Scots bowsome (“compliant”), West Frisian bûgsum (“flexible, bendy”), Dutch buigzaam (“flexible, pliant”), German biegsam (“flexible, pliant”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA