New retroacroetymythostupidnym

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Tue, 23 Aug 2005 00:29:03 -0400, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:

>"Pogi" is colloquial Tagalog for "handsome" (like "guwapo", I guess), says
>the book. I'm pretty much ignorant of Tagalog myself.

I believe "pogi" for "guwapo" is baliktad (backwards slang) of relatively
recent vintage. It's not mentioned in Hal Conklin's 1956 article "Tagalog
Speech Disguise" (Language 32:136-139), so I would guess it was
popularized later than that. Too late to help us out with "pogue", "pogey
bait", etc.


--Ben Zimmer