kolpos

This word names less the chest as a body part than the space in front of it. Fold your arms and a hollow forms; that hollow is what the word points to, and whatever fills it is being held close. One word can therefore cover scenes that look quite different:

• a friend leaning back against your chest at a meal
• a child gathered up and carried in a parent's arms
• grain or coins carried in the deep fold of a loose robe

Because that space is where a person keeps what is dear, the word turns easily into a picture of favor and belonging. To be in someone's bosom is to hold the nearest place to them, and at an ancient table the nearest place was also the place of honor. That is what warms the scene of the poor man carried to Abraham (Luke 16:22) and the words about the Son who is "in the bosom of the Father" (John 1:18): each describes someone given the closest place there is.

The clothing use is the easiest to miss. A long robe belted at the waist made a deep fold across the chest, and that fold worked as a pocket. When Jesus promises a measure pressed down and running over, poured "into your lap" (Luke 6:38), the picture is grain heaped into the fold of a garment held out to receive it.

Greek had a plainer word for the chest itself (στῆθος), and another for the arms that do the embracing (ἀγκάλη). This word names the sheltered space those arms make.

The same word that names the hollow at the front of a body names a hollow in a shoreline. A coast that bends inward makes the sea a pocket, and Greek sailors called that pocket by this word long before the New Testament was written.

It appears this way once, when the crew of Paul's storm-battered ship sees daylight and makes out a bay with a beach they might run the ship onto (Acts 27:39). The point is the shape of the water, not whether it is a good harbor: a harbor (λιμήν) is judged safe for ships, while this word only says the sea curves in here.