In the wild: boujie

[Jesse Sheidlower]

HDAS does have this, under the heading "_boojie_ or _boojy_",
with a first quotation from the 1970 edition of Major's
dictionary.

Jesse Sheidlower
OED

On Tue, Jan 25, 2011 at 12:07:41AM -0500, George Thompson wrote:
> > My immediate assumption was that this was some colloquial version of "bourgeois".
>
> Correctly, too.
>
> The indispensable HDAS seems not to have this, (while remaining indispensable); Green's Dictionary of Slang has citations going back to the mid 1970s; it was discussed here, to no benefit, in 2002.
> I haven't checked OED.
>
> GAT
>
> George A. Thompson
> Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Date: Monday, January 24, 2011 10:35 pm
> Subject: In the wild: boujie
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
> > Heard on Unique Eats program, in reference to a hamburger with poached
> > pears:
> >
> > "It's a little boujie, but..."
> >
> > My immediate assumption was that this was some colloquial version of
> > "bourgeois". And Google showed a healthy representation (24.5K raw). UD
> > has it going back to 2003 (bouji), but the definitions leave a lot to
> > be
> > desired. Most suggest that it is some kind of slurred/mumbled version
> > of
> > "bullshit" (a la Animal House, I suppose). But the latest entry (2010)
> > seems to be almost exactly on the money:
> >
> > > A Southern African-American contraction of the word "bourgeoisie",
> > > used to describe someone rich or in the upper class. Similar meaning
> > > to "sidity".
> >
> > The only issue is that the speaker in the program was a female
> > Asian-American chef (I missed the name--[Lee] Anne Wong?) and definitely
> > not Southern. (If it is Anne Wong, perhaps she picked it up at FIT...)
> >
> > OT item of interest: "Cold Stone Creamery is dessert pornography."
> > Interesting that "porn" is not shortened.
> >
> >      VS-)
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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