bardacious (= bodacious??)

[Jesse Sheidlower]

On Wed, Jan 18, 2006 at 04:41:47PM -0600, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC wrote:
> OED does not list bardacious, and has 1976 for this sense of bodacious.
>
> "FEDERAL FROLICS" New York | Barnard Bulletin | 1937-11-05 p. 2 col 4.
> "A DICTIONARY OF SLANG WORDS and phrases is being complied by the WPA
> Federal Writers' Project, and they want help. . . . From Harlem come
> words like "bardacious" (marvelous)."

DARE includes a quotation for this spelling and sense from Van Vechten's
1926 _Nigger Heaven_, presumably the source of the "Harlem" notation
in the above quote.

Jesse Sheidlower
OED

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