I wrote this limerick for OEDILF:

My mom says I shouldn't say bust
As past tense of break...that I must
Say broke or it's broken.
(Though sometimes when jokin'
I'll talk of big busts with such lust!)

Obviously it is a boy talking, and not I.

Anyway, the question has come up as to whether bust used this way is a slang use or not. I read it that way in the online AHD, but an OEDILFer says that M-W only identifies a slang of bust as being an arrest. Who is right?

Although it's rather a casual use, in the UK we'd certainly recognise the word's use as meaning "broken".

Are you querying whether the use of bust in this way is slang or not? M-W online gives for the verb:

quote:

a : to break or smash especially with force; also : to make inoperative <busted my watch> b : to bring an end to : BREAK

So, it is definitely in the dictionary, although they, unlike others, don't appear to mark it specifically as slang.

Bust in this sense is from a dialectal pronunciation of burst; cf. cuss and hoss.

I looked it up in Dictonary.com, and here is the AHD entry.

That surely indicates that it is slang. Am I wrong then? Or is it debatable (that's the perfect situation for the correct use of "moot.")?