Query: "book" = leave, run away

[Mark A Mandel]

On Thu, 1 Aug 2002, Grant Barrett wrote:

#I thought it was fairly clear that "boogie" most likely derives from the
#intransitive French verb bouger, meaning "to move, budge, stir" or its
#conjugation bougez, which is an imperative form, the formal present tense
#third person singular form, and the present tense third person plural form,
#or bougé, the masculine past participle form, all three pronounced the same
#way: boo-jzhay. A typical anglophone mispronunciation puts you immediately
#very close to "boogie." We could also in this context talk about the origin
#of "to budge."

"Fairly clear" to whom? I don't see how an anglophone *hearing* any form
of "bouger" would turn [Z] into [g]; [Z] > [dZ], as in "budge", is more
likely. IMHO [g] could only have arisen from "bouger" via an
anglophone's *reading* of the French orthography, which seems a much
less likely channel for a loan word to enter the slang register.

(BTW, the 3rd singular and plural forms of "bouger" -- "bouge" and
"bougent" respectively -- are pronounced [buZ]. The orthographic second
syllable of these forms is silent.)

AHD4 derives "boogie" from "boogie-woogie", and that "Possibly from
Black West African English (Sierra Leone) 'bogi-(bogi), to dance;
possibly akin to Hausa 'buga', to beat drums". Whatever the origin of
"boogie-woogie", it seems to me much likelier than "bouger" as an etymon
for "boogie".

-- Mark A. Mandel