Boody

[Wilson Gray]

 >"My boody and my cookie and my titi hurt."


I don't know 'cookie' or 'titi' but in my boyhood 'boody'/'booty' was an
exact equivalent of 'ass': e.g., "I got a piece of boody", "I'll kick
your
boody", "Up your boody", etc., etc. -- that is, with the sense of
'vulva'/'sex' as well as that of 'buttocks'/'anus'. I always assumed
this
was a corruption of 'body'. It's still current, but I'm not sure of the
exact sense usually. The song says "Shake your boody", doesn't it? What
is
it -- precisely -- that one is being encouraged to shake?


The word appears in Chapman's dictionary and in Spears'. Perhaps it is
largely a 'black' word as Chapman indicates.


-- Doug Wilson


I learned both the word "boody" with almost all of the meanings
supplied above in 1942, when I was in the first grade, i.e. "ass, butt,
buttocks," etc. Since I was pre-adolescent, the sexual references meant
nothing. For example, there was the rhyme:

Wint downtown to see Miss Moody.
Paid two cint to see her boody.
Boody so black, couldn't see the crack.
Axed Miss Moody for my two cint back.

Although "crack" is ambiguous in this context, in the first grade, I
understood it to refer uniquely to Miss Moody's butt crack.

Note the implied self-hatred wrt skin color.

BTW, has anyone else heard "plumber('s) split" used for ass/butt crack?

-Wilson Gray