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bolo

nounverbnounverbnounverbnounattested in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈbəʊ.ləʊ//
  • United States//ˈboʊ.loʊ//

A long, heavy, single-edged machete.

noun

  1. 1

    A long, heavy, single-edged machete.

  2. 2

    A type of punch; an uppercut.

    He jerked me off balance and the hand with the brass knucks came around in a looping bolo punch.

Etymology

From Philippine Spanish bolo, from Tagalog bolo.

verb

  1. 1

    To cleave or dismember (a person or an animal) with a bolo knife.

noun

  1. 1

    A soldier not capable of the minimum standards of marksmanship.

Etymology

Supposedly named after Bolo Pascha, a German agent in France during World War I.

verb

  1. 1

    To fail to meet the minimum standards of marksmanship.

noun

  1. 1

    A string or leather necktie secured with an ornamental slide.

Etymology

From Argentine Spanish boleadora (“lariat”).

verb

  1. 1

    To dress (somebody) in a bolo.

    Selwyn, sitting up rumpled and cross-legged on the floor, after having boloed Drina to everybody's exquisite satisfaction, looked around at the sudden rustle of skirts to catch a glimpse of a vanishing figure—a glimmer of ruddy hair and the white curve of a youthful face, half-buried in a muff.

noun

  1. 1

    A request for law enforcement officers to be on the lookout for a suspect.

Etymology

An acronym of be on the lookout.

Forms

plural
bolos
past tense
boloed
past participle
boloed
present participle
boloing
third person singular
bolos
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).