unbosom

present singular third person unbosoms · participle present unbosoming · participle past unbosomed · past unbosomed

1. ambitransitivearchaicTo tell someone about (one's troubles), and thus obtain relief.

   Their several counsels they unbosom shall To loves mistook, and so be mock'd withal Upon the next occasion that we meet, With visages displayed, to talk and greet.

   1594, Willam Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost, act V, scene 2, line 2040

   1 more example

   At first Puddock was reserved, but recollecting that he had been left quite free to tell whom he pleased, he made up his mind to unbosom; and suggested, for the sake of quiet and a longer conversation, that they should go round by the ferry.

   1863, Sheridan Le Fanu, The House by the Churchyard

2. archaicreflexiveTo free (oneself) of the burden of one's troubles by telling of them.

   Watt was not the first to whom Mr Graves had unbosomed himself, in this connexion. For he had unbosomed himself to Arsene, many years before […]

   1953, Samuel Beckett, Watt, Paris: Olympia Press, →OL

   1 more example

   Sometimes there is a breach-of-promise case by and by; and when he sees his letter in print it makes him cruelly uncomfortable and he perceives that he never would have unbosomed himself to that large and honest degree if he had known that he was writing for the public.

   1924, Mark Twain, Mark Twain's Autobiography, New York and London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, Preface, Volume 1

3. archaicTo confess a misdeed.