[Ads-l] Boo?

[Wilson Gray]

JL wrote:
A Southern equivalent of "sweetie."

I heard it some years back.

I think "boo-boo" is synonymous, as in speaking to one's child.


Yes, it's a term of endearment.

My intuition is that _boo-boo_, of which _boo_ is a clip, is an alternative
form of _bay-bay_ - nowadays spelled _bae-bae_ - a BE variant of _baby_.
All of the variants have been ordinary in BE as long as I've been hearing
English spoken by black people. I wouldn't be surprised if it these forms
went back to slavery. It can last as a nickname into childhood and even
into adulthood. I was once my mama's "bay-bay" and my half-brothers, one 62
and the other 63, are still "Bay-Bay" to this day, though one of them signs
his e-mails "_BB_," as in "BB King." OTOH, Beatrice [be-AT-triss] Green, a
daughter of one our neighbors, back behind the Cotton Curtain, was always
referred to as "Boo-Boo" or as simply "Boo."

As to whether this is also general Southern, I don't know.

On Sun, Aug 13, 2017 at 12:58 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> A Southern equivalent of "sweetie."
>
> I heard it some years back.
>
> I think "boo-boo" is synonymous, as in speaking to one's child.
>
> Too lazy to investigate further.
>
> JL
>
> JL
>
> On Sat, Aug 12, 2017 at 11:46 AM, Dave Hause <dwhause at cablemo.net> wrote:
>
> > Radley?
> > Dave Hause
> > -----Original Message----- From: Dan Goncharoff
> > Sent: Saturday, August 12, 2017 8:01 AM
> > To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> > Subject: Boo?
> >
> >
> > Read this morning:
> >
> > https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/11/us/politics/omarosa-manig
> > ault-newman-nabj.html
> >
> > When Mr. Gordon said she was wrong, she replied, "I have it on tape,
> boo."
> > His response: "OK, boo, plat it."
> >
> > DanG
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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>



-- 
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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