_Boody_ "arse" vs. _booty_ "id."

[Douglas G. Wilson]

On 5/14/2011 8:01 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society<ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter<wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: _Boody_ "arse" vs. _booty_ "id."
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> But seriously.
>
> If any common AAVE term is from Africa, it could be "boody/booty."
>
> The glib ety. from "body" is not very satisfactory; and the referent
> is universal (I almost wrote "inescapable," but that would be ridiculous).
> So it seems, was the term, but only in AAVE until the advent of hiphop. If
> early printings take the form "booty," that may be only because writers and
> proofreaders assumed it was just a sense development of that SE word.
>
> It could be, via the cliche' that pirates and conquistadors went in search
> of "gold and booty." (What else could they be after?) But that strikes me as
> a little too literary, even if the average ten-year-old didn't know what
> "booty" meant.
>
> Any reasonable ety. suggestions?
>
> JL
>
> On Sat, May 14, 2011 at 7:02 AM, Jonathan Lighter<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:
>
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>> Sender:       American Dialect Society<ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter<wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject:      Re: _Boody_ "arse" vs. _booty_ "id."
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Damned prescriptivists! They're everywhere!
>>
>> JL
>>
>> On Sat, May 14, 2011 at 12:38 AM, Wilson Gray<hwgray at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>
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>>> -----------------------
>>> Sender:       American Dialect Society<ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>> Poster:       Wilson Gray<hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
>>> Subject:      _Boody_ "arse" vs. _booty_ "id."
>>>
>>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> Some may remember an earlier post in which I mentioned the case in
>>> which a black male author's use of "boody" was _sic_-ed by a black
>>> female reviewer. My first impression was that she was annoyed by his
>>> use of the obscenity. Further reading revealed that it was, rather,
>>> the author's use of the spelling, _boody_, instead of -_booty_ .
>>>
>>> IAC, the book is Don't The Moon Look Lonesome and its author is Stanley
>>> Crouch.
>>>
>>> As for my further blather about "emphatic devoicing" being the
>>> probable origin of the feeling that the proper spelling of "boody" is
>>> _booty_, causing people to relate the word to _booty_ in the pirate
>>> sense, a clear example of this can be heard in the rap, Rapper's
>>> Delight, by the Sugar Hill Gang. The rapper has the audience repeat
>>> after him:
>>>
>>> "I. Am. Somebah.Tea!"
>>>
>>> --
>>> -Wilson ....
--

I seem to have remarked on "boody" on this list in 2000 and 2004 and 2005.

I think Wilson Gray and I independently opined that this was pronounced
"boody" when we first heard it (would have been about 1960 for me
[Detroit]).

It was my callow impression back then that "boody" might have been a
form of "body". This was not a scholarly judgement but rather a
youngster's casual notion. I do not have any evidence for it, and I
don't particularly favor it now (although I don't have any other story
either). I suppose my thinking was by analogy with synonymous "ass"
which was/is commonly used for "body".

The first (bracketed) example for "booty"/"boody" in HDAS apparently has
"booty" equated to "body" (1838), 'why' I don't know.

Use of this "boody" was not by any means restricted to 'AAVE' (nor to
any particular ethnic group) in my own early experience (which is of
course necessarily narrow and possibly sometimes misremembered).

-- Doug Wilson

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