"bumfuck"?

Jesse Sheidlower jester at PANIX.COM
Thu Jan 15 16:00:28 UTC 2009


On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 09:16:22AM -0500, Joel S. Berson wrote:
> At 1/14/2009 10:53 PM, Jesse Sheidlower wrote:
>> On Wed, Jan 14, 2009 at 10:11:55PM -0500, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>> > Does "bumfuck", either noun "act of anal copulation" or verb, go back
>> > to the18th century?
>>
>> Not as far as I know. I have one noun example from the
>> Victorian era, and a handful of verb examples from that era
>> (from the Pearl, My Secret Life, and other expected sources).
>
> Then you may have another, from _A Novel: Blindspot, By a Lady in
> Disguise & a Gentleman in Exile_.

I do have later examples of this sense, though very
few. However the below example is actually in the sense 'a
despicable person; an idiot', which I don't have until the
late 1970s.

> But they anachronistically put "bumfuck" into the mouth of a
> character of Boston in the 1760s.

Well, if it's not an anachronism, I'd love to see the proof!
There are no examples in ECCO, FWIW.

Jesse Sheidlower
OED

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