Beau=girlfriend

[Gordon, Matthew J.]

Perhaps influenced by "boo" which I thought was primarily used for women, but some UrbanDictionarios allow for men too. Indeed one entry states that 'boo' derives from 'beau' which sounds reasonable.


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society on behalf of Leslie Decker
Sent: Sun 9/7/2008 11:22 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject:      Beau=girlfriend
 
I sheepishly admit to occasionally reading the gossip columns from WENN
news on the Internet Movie Database (imdb.com) website...  Recently I
have noticed that they have started using the word 'beau' to describe
someone's GIRLfriend, as in:

    Hollywood actor Morgan Freeman <http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000151/>
    has found love again, just one month after he announced he was
    divorcing his wife of 24 years.

    The first image of The Dark Knight
    <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0468569/> star and his reported new
    /*beau, Mary Joyce Hays*/, surfaced in the media this week
    (ends05Sep08), showing Freeman hugging the blonde divorcee and
    smiling widely.

http://www.imdb.com/news/ni0562131/

I have always thought of the word 'beau' as a rather outdated word for
boyfriend--it is a masculine form after all.  After seeing this blurb,
which is the second time I noticed it on this website, I went looking
(for about 5 minutes) for other examples of the word being used in this
way.  I DID find this entry from the Urban Dictionary:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=beau which seems to imply
that more people think beau is acceptable for girlfriend.

What do you think?

Leslie

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