[Ads-l] The UD isn't _always_ worthless!

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
Thu Sep 22 11:34:50 UTC 2016


Against the judgment of the editor, HDAS was compelled to prefer the
spelling "booty" on the OCD principle that the most frequently encountered
orthography must determine the shape of the lemma.  At least there's a
cross-ref. at "boody"!

HDAS exx. go back to 1926.  A much later memoir places "boody" [sic] in
Kansas several years before that. (Complete with grade-school students
giggling at the  homophonous "booty.")

JL

On Thu, Sep 22, 2016 at 4:27 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> _Boody_
> booty _Boody is the traditional spelling for the word booty_. The spelling
> 'booty' became the accepted spelling at 70's band KC and the Sunshine Band
> had a popular hit called Shake Your Booty.
> "Man, she's got a big boody"
> #booty #ass #backporch #groundround #catcher's mitt
> by JimmyCatfish June 22, 2006
>
> Not when it agrees with me, anyway!
>
> In fact, of course, it would be great to have a cite. But it's very
> difficult to find a cite for a word unknown in the standard language and
> that's also considered obscene in BE. I personally have found nothing older
> than the record-titles "Boodie Green"/"Boo-Dee Green," dating only from
> 1950 and 1959, resp., IIRC.
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9dLY8qBGz0
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbeQ3RLchf4
>
> My interpretation of the not-obvious spellings is that they are
> euphemism-equivalents due to the word's perceived obscenity, as is also the
> case with _sissy_ re-spelled as _cissy_ in the record-titles, "Cissy
> Strut"/"Sophisticated Cissy," wherein its meaning is understood to be
> "fag(got)," though neither record has any words.
>
> --
> -Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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