David Silberstein wrote: ... > Anyway: > > boss. Early Americans, independent and democratic, never liked > the word "master" with all its aristocratic associations. Late > in the 18th century they adopted the Dutch word /baas/ meaning > the same thing, and were soon spelling it /boss/. By as early > as 1838 /boss/ had achieved common usage and writers as > prominent as James Fenimore Cooper were condemning it as a > barbaric vulgarization of the language. Some people think that > /boss/ as an adjective meaning the best, the greatest, is > recent teenage slang, but the word has been used in the same > sense since the mid-19th century. Which is why Mark Twain made such a big deal of the word in _A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court_.