oofle dust

[Dennis R. Preston]

Roly,

I grew up with foo-foo dust (same meaning) in the South Midlands US. See
DARE (Vol II) for a West African foofoo (dough) which came to the US and
one Illinois citation for foo-foo dust meaning "dust bunny" (little balls
of dust which collect under furniture). I'm surprised DARE doesn't have
foo-foo dust for "magic powder."

dInIs (whose daddy always sprinkled a little foo-foo dust around in reponse
to unresonable requests)

At 7:07 PM -0500 11/19/99, Prof. Roly Sussex wrote:
>Is the phrase "oofle dust" or perhaps "uffle dust" used in the US?
>There are 4 hits on the Web for oofle dust, and a listener to
>Aust. radio reports "uffle dust" from Canada. It seems to be a magic
>substance which you sprinkle around to make things happen. I can't
>find any references.
>Thanks
>Roly Sussex
>The University of Queensland


Dennis R. Preston
Department of Linguistics and Languages
Michigan State University
East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA
preston at pilot.msu.edu
Office: (517)353-0740
Fax: (517)432-2736