_Boody_ "arse" vs. _booty_ "id."

[Jonathan Lighter]

Doug, I never heard "boody" in NYC. Ever.

Not that it didn't exist, just that your average middle-class NYC
white-guy of the fifties and sixties probably didn't know what it meant.

JL

On Sat, May 14, 2011 at 9:26 AM, Douglas G. Wilson <douglas at nb.net> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET>
> Subject:      Re: _Boody_ "arse" vs. _booty_ "id."
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>  On 5/14/2011 8:01 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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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:
> >
> >> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> >> -----------------------
> >> 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:
> >>
> >>   >  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> >>> -----------------------
> >>> 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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