Another kind of buddy

[Jonathan Lighter]

As HDAS shows, a "bunkie/ bunky" originated as a bunkmate but eventually came to be used in the army as a synonym for "good friend."  Hence the vocative use, which is now well on its way out except as a jocular form of address or nickname. "Buddy" began as a childhood syn. for "brother."  App. it started to mean "friend" during the Civil War, but was not in national use till World War I popularized it.

  The short form "bud" (at first solely in direct address) has been pushing "buddy" out of the spotlight for a good thirty years.  During the CB radio craze of the mid-7os, CB enthusiasts stereotypically addressed each other as "good buddy," regardless of sex (or gender, if you've got your semantic domains drawn post-'70s style).

  "Good buddy" especially seems to have seemed overly, hence suspiciously, effusive, and in some cases just patronizing. (Geezer types will recall the Skipper addressing Gilligan as "little buddy" much of the time.) Effusive, suspicious, perhaps endearing?  Hmmmmmmm. I wonder what he _really_ wants....

  With only one cite available at the time, the f-word kind of "buddy" didn't make it in to Vol. 1 of HDAS, though _asshole buddy_, usually without overtones, unquestionably goes back to WWII. Yes, times were different then.

  JL

  JL
Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Wilson Gray
Subject: Re: Another kind of buddy
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I first heard "butt buddy" about six years ago from my then
twelve-year-old niece. After my heart had been defibrillated - when I
was twelve, only hardened rogues and street thugs used that kind of
language, not little, middle-school chicks - she informed me that
"everybody talks like that." She was also a big user of the word
"pimp," though it turned out that she had not the foggiest what the
word really means. Thangs ain't what they used to be, to coin a
phrase.

FWIW, back in the '70's, there was a local (Boston} gay bar named
"Buddies." One of my asshole buddies, a habitue of Buddies, was the
first person that I ever heard use the term, "fuck buddy." This would
have been ca.1973-1975, correlating quite well with the 1973 cite.

IAC, I wonder whether there's any historico-semantic connection
between "fuck buddy, butt buddy" and "asshole buddy," used by (only
black?) men (only from Saint Louis?) of my generation - born in the
late '30's - to mean "very close friend." Likewise, I've wondered
whether "hardleg," a Saint Louis-BE term meaning, like "stud," "any
random male," may have originated as a term for a transvestite.

In the old black-shoe Army of ca.1958-1968 - in those days, we
referred to the old, Korean-War Army as the "brown-shoe" Army - there
were two kinds of buddies, "('War' or 'Army') buddies," pretty much
the same as "friends" in civilian life, and "bunk-buddies," with no
civilian equivalent. A bunk-buddy was the person with whom you shared
a double-decker bunk, as seen in, e.g. Full Metal Jacket. There are
things that you simply don't have the time or the ability to do by
yourself, such as rolling a poncho or folding a shelter-half or laying
out your equipment for a full-field inspection or pitching a tent. In
the field, you and your bunk buddy are also tent-mates, living in the
same pup tent, which is made up of two one (1) each shelter-halfs.
Your bunk-buddy is obligated to help you with this stuff and you, in
turn, are likewise obligated to help him. People are assigned bunks
solely by alphabetical order by last name. Hence, your bunk buddy
could turn out to be anybody. And this is where the much-to-be-feared
"breakdown of unit cohesiveness" comes into play. A homophobe could
very well end up with a homosexual as his bunk-buddy / tent-mate. And
how bad would that be? The homophobe(s) would rightly be quite upset
and that would lead to a breakdown of unit cohesiveness. Naturally, in
such a case, you absolutely would not want to go to war with the army
you have! Of course, if the homophobe has no idea whether his
bunk-buddy / tent-mate is a homosexual, there's no problem. Hence,
"Don't ask-Don't tell."

-Wilson

On 6/12/07, William Salmon wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: William Salmon
> Subject: Re: Another kind of buddy
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> > If "friend with benefits" postdates "roommate with benefits", then it
> > would seem to be more friendly than "buddy with benefits" or "fuck buddy".
>
>
> There are also 'butt buddies', which I think has been around a while.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Sam'l Clemens

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