Boo-Boo

[Baker, John]

        Safire's On Language column today discusses "boo-boo," a blunder or egregious error, of uncertain derivation, first OED cite 1954.  Is there any connection to the presumably unflattering nickname, most familiar as the name of Yogi Bear's sidekick?  Boo-Boo Bear didn't come along until 1958, but the nickname is older; a 1938 court case has a party named 'Boo Boo' Hoff.  Murray Hill Restaurant v. Thirteen Twenty One Locust, 98 F.2d 578 (3d Cir. 1938).

John Baker