bogart (v.)

Tue Feb 12 14:49:25 UTC 2008

That's valuable info, Ron.  My assumption has always been that the Bogey connection came from movies where he constantly held a cigarette in his mouth.  Of course, I can't identify any such movie....

  HDAS has "niggerlip"  from 1940.

  More recent, quite reasonable, "bogart" developments:

  to steal or seize control of  brazenly:

  1982 Craig Castleman _Getting Up: Subway Graffiti in New York_ (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press) 48: Large markers used for tagging, however, are usually kept under the counter in stires, and the only possible way to steal them is "Bogarting." This method requires the rackers to convince a clerk to let them see a desired pen. When they have their hands on it, the writers...run from the store as fast as they can.
  2002 Sacha Jenkins _Ego-Trip's Big Book of Racism_  (N.Y.: HarperCollins) 64: Introducing Native Americans to firewater and bogarting their land for bags of worthless beads.

  n. an act of stealing brazenly:

  1982 Craig Castleman _Getting Up: Subway Graffiti in New York_ (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press) 48: [Some] writers are unwilling to hazard a Bogart.

  (simply) to keep (a cigarette) in one's mouth.

  2004 Julian Rubenstein _Ballad of the Whiskey Robber _ (N.Y.: Little, Brown) 89:  By 8:45 Lajos's men were  fighting over the chairs and spilling coffee, half of them bogarting cigarettes, the other half complaining about the smoke.

  to force one's way into; "crash"

  2001 Pearl Cleage _I WIsh I Had a Red Dress_ (rpt. N.Y.: Harper Perennial 2002) 162: They sounded like some alien life-form, known for bogarting into places where they aren't welcome.
  2005 Franz Wisner  _Honeymoon with My Brother_  (N.Y.: St. Martin's) 87:
  His plan was simply to cut in front of everyone else.  "He's just bogarting the line."

  JL

RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: RonButters at AOL.COM
Subject: bogart (v.)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I remember the verb "bogart" from the mid-1950s,when it meant 'hold a=20
cigarette in one's mouth in such a way as to get the end wet." I guess it wo=
uld be a=20
natural progression from that meaning to one in which one kept the joint too=
=20
long.=20

Supposedly, the term arose because the actor had rather thick lips.

I was grateful for--hence particularly aware of--this use of "bogart" becaus=
e=20
I could use it instead of another (somewhat more common) term for the same=20
thing, "nigger lip," which I personally avoided (as I did most "rough" speec=
h,=20
being a cryptosissy). An ugly phrase to modern ears, though in the mostly wh=
ite=20
high school I went to, users were largely unaware that it might be deeply=20
offensive, and would have naively been surprised if anyone had challenged th=
em on=20
it.

In a message dated 2/11/08 7:22:07 PM, wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM writes:

> HDAS also has a '66, from novelist Malcolm Braly's _On the Yard_, a book=20
> based on a few years he'd spent in San Quentin ca1960.
>=20
> =A0 JL
> Wilson Gray wrote:
> =A0 ---------------------- Information from the mail header=20
> -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Wilson Gray
> Subject: Re: bogart (v.)
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------=
---
> --
>=20
> 1966?! Whoa! Impressive. That's almost as early, ca.1964, as I first
> heard it on the street in Los Angeles. FWIW, it was also pronounced
> "bogard" ['bou "gard / 'bou "ga:d] by young guys who weren't familiar
> with Humphrey Bogart. Los Angeles BE is/was? *much* more r-ful than
> the Saint Louis version, to the extent that some local blacks even
> said "nigger" (*very* creepy to my ears!), the same as white standard
> speakers, as opposed to the usual BE "nigguh, nigga," etc., however
> you want to spell it in eye-dialect.
>=20
> FWIW, at that time in that place, to "bogart" someone was to force
> oneself on someone, to bully, to intimidate, to back someone down, to
> "make [someone] unball [his] fists," as Richard Pryor once expressed
> it. Basically, to make someone chicken out by implied threat or even
> by mere force of personality. A known bad motherfucker could bogart a
> weaker personality merely by asking, "Say what?" in a pleasant,
> non-threatening tone of voice.
>=20
> -Wilson
>=20
> On 2/11/08, Joel S. Berson wrote:
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header=20
> -----------------------
> > Sender: American Dialect Society
> > Poster: "Joel S. Berson"
> > Subject: Re: bogart (v.)
> >=20
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------=
-----
> >
> > At 2/11/2008 01:44 PM, Gregory McNamee wrote:
> > >I don't have the beginning of your thread, Joel, so this may already
> > >have been mentioned, but (IIRC) "bogart" came into widespread use
> > >after the movie Easy Rider appeared in 1969,
> > >with its soundtrack song
> > >by the Fraternity of Man, "Don't Bogart That Joint":
> > >
> > >Don't bogart that joint my friend
> > >Pass it over to me
> >
> > For this sense (2. trans. orig. and chiefly U.S. To appropriate (a
> > marijuana cigarette) greedily or selfishly) the on-line OED's
> > earliest cite is exactly the above. For sense 1, OED has 1966. But
> > I think neither is quite the same as Natalie Angier's example.
> >
> > Joel
> >
> >
> > >Don't bogart that joint my friend
> > >Pass it over to me
> > >
> > >Roll another one
> > >Just like the other one
> > >You've been holding on to it
> > >And I sure will like a hit
> > >
> > >[chorus]
> > >
> > >Roll another one
> > >Just like the other one
> > >That one's burned to the end
> > >Come on and be a real friend
> > >
> > >[chorus]
> > >
> > >------------------------------------------------------------
> > >The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
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> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -----
> -Sam'l Clemens
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