Boo and my boo are a terms of endearment common among African-Americans, going at least as far back as mid-90s jams like the Ghost Town DJ’s’ “My Boo.” This is part of a complete episode.
- Listen on:
- Apple
- Spotify
- Castbox
- + more apps
You must log in to post a comment.
2 comments
More from this show
The editors of the Oxford English Dictionary recently added several Irish English terms. One of them is segotia, which means “friend...
Lily in Iowa City, Iowa, says she and her roommate differ about how to pronounce the word hammock. Is it HAM-mock or HAM-mick? This is part...
Chris in Northampton, Massachusetts, and his mother are debating whether you can refer to your dog as somebody? Is it reasonable to say...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski’s puzzle is about animal anatomy, specifically nouns and adjectives formed by combining the name of an animal...
Was English spelling standardized before the advent of the printing press? No, but there were some significant periods in history where...
The Irish English word bockety describes someone who has difficulty walking, or something that’s fallen into a state of disrepair, as...
The discussion of the word “boo” brought to mind “Slippin’ and a Slidin”, a song that was popular in the 1950s.
All of the recordings of this song that I have listened to include the phrase “ain’t gonna be your fool no more.” However, in the version recorded by Little Richard in 1956, the second iteration of this phrase sounds (at least to me) as if the word “fool” has been replaced by “boo.”
When I first heard this song (during the “oldies revival” of the 1970s), I assumed that “boo” was derived from the word “beau.” This bit of amateur etymology is in keeping with the more recent explanation provided by the Urban Dictionary.
Your recent discussion of the origins of the word “boo” brought to mind a song popular in the 1950s called “Slippin’ and a Slidin.”
All of the recordings of this song that I have listened to include the phrase “ain’t gonna be your fool no more.” However, in the version recorded by Little Richard in 1956, the second iteration of this phrase sounds (at least to me) as if the word “fool” has been replaced by “boo.”
When I first heard this song, during the “oldies revival” of the 1970s, I assumed that “boo” was derived from the word “beau.” This bit of amateur etymology is in keeping with the one provided by the Urban Dictionary, which also connects “boo” to “beau.”