bardacious (= bodacious??)

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 1/18/06, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC <Bill.Mullins at us.army.mil> wrote:
>
> 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."

I'd say both of these fall under HDAS sense 1, "enormous; formidable;
strong; excessive; big," dated to 1843.


--Ben Zimmer

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