borrowing pronouns

[Larry Trask]

On Thu, 18 Mar 1999, Anthony Appleyard wrote:

>   (2) Re borrowing a pronoun of one language into some other use in
> another language: etymological dictionaries say that US English
> "bozo" = "fool" < Spanish "vosotros":

Odd.  The several sources in my office all describe `bozo' as being of
unknown origin, and some of them offer speculations which are all
utterly different from this one and from one another.  The word is
recorded from 1920, and all the early citations appear to place the word
in urban use and in urban contexts in the east -- not what I'd expect
for a borrowing from Spanish.

> could it also be that the US
> English slang term of address and then nickname "buster" came from
> the abovementioned Spanish dialect <buste'>?, and not the English
> for "one who busts (= breaks) things".

The OED regards `buster', as a term of address for a man, as derived
from the earlier, and well-attested, slang use of the word to denote `a
roistering blade, a dashing fellow', a sense recorded from about 1850 --
rather early for a loan from Spanish, I'd hazard, and apparently itself
derived from an earlier use of `buster' to mean `something impressive'.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk