bardacious (= bodacious??)

[Mullins, Bill AMRDEC]

OED has:
bodacious, a. U.S. dial.  Complete, thorough, arrant. Also as adv
1845 W. T. THOMPSON Chron. Pineville 178 She's so bowdacious
unreasonable when she's raised.

I'm not sure if the following cite matches the definition above, or the
1976 OED sense ("Excellent, fabulous, great. ")

"CUBS WIN, 3 TO 1, AND START EAST." by CHARLES DRYDEN
Chicago Daily Tribune (1872-1963); May 6, 1907; pg. 6 col 1.
"Overall was good, so was the descendant of kings, and the fielding was
bodacious if anybody knows what that means." ["Overall" was Orval
Overall ; "descendant of kings" was Charles Phillippe.]

And to further confuse matters, see this cite, later from the same year,
by the same writer:


"SOX WIN A WEIRD GAME, 16-2" CHARLES DRYDEN. _Chicago Daily Tribune_ Aug
20, 1907, pg. 7 col 2.
"No wonder the heavens cracked open and the rain descended in bodacious
torrents."

> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society
> [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Benjamin Zimmer
> Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2006 4:55 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: bardacious (= bodacious??)
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: bardacious (= bodacious??)
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> -----------------
>
> On 1/18/06, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC <Bill.Mullins at us.army.mil> wrote:
> >
> > OED does not list bardacious, and has 1976 for this sense
> of bodacious.
>
> DARE's got it from 1908, but with a rather different sense:
>
> 1908 _DN_ 3.292 eAL, wGA, _Bodacious_ ... Bold,
> unceremonious, outright. Also _bardacious_.
>
> > "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)."
>
> This might relate to the 1935-36 cites I found for
> "bodacious" with senses ranging from 'daring' to 'attractive'...
>
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0504E&L=ADS-L&P=R86
>
>
> --Ben Zimmer
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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