Bogeys, Snot and Monsters February 21, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : Medieval, Modern , trackback
A few weeks ago Beach had the very great pleasure of looking at the genealogy of various words with a root in bugge: these related to such monsters as bogeyman, boggles and boggins (all nasty fairies). That post was dedicated to following an almost pathetically inadequate trail of breadcrumbs through the Indo European forest. This post wants to point to a curiosity that has been going around and around in poor Beach’s head. When words go ricocheting down the well of time their form alters as do their meanings: but in the same way that an original form can be reconstructed through later spellings, it is striking that even quite minor secondary meanings can remain in place through the generations. This leads us to snot, or as one dictionary puts it ‘a piece of dried nasal mucus’. In English a series of bugge words have a secondary meaning as snot (bogey, boggle, bugaboo) and this can be easily attested in a series of nineteenth-century works from Britain and America: curiously, incredibly even, a series of German words in bögge have the same secondary meaning. Now all these words refer primarily to a supernatural monster that specializes in frightening children. Why the associated meaning: whose presence in German and English suggest that it may go back to a monster that was frightening the feral kids of the Free Germans back at the time of Christ’s birth? Three possibilities jump to mind. First, the boggart/bug/bögge was reckoned to be slimy (or snot-like) in some way. Second, German and English speakers independently referred to snot in this way because like the boggart/bug/bögge it was disgusting. Third, there is a coincidence or possibly another similar Germanic bog word kicking around that meant snot. It would be tempting to suggest that these words got confused with a Germanic ‘bog’ meaning swamp or marsh: you’ve got a marsh under your nose… But ‘bog’ was borrowed from Gaelic into English in the early modern period and does not exist in German. Any other thoughts on the connection monster/snot: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com Beach is confused, intrigued, tired and emotional about this issue.
PS in writing this Beach used referred extensively to an excellent article Cooper, Brian ‘Lexical reflections inspired by Slavonic *bog: English bogey from a Slavonic root?’, Transactions of the Philological Society 103 (2005), 73 – 97. If Brian ever reads this, I’d love to get in touch. Note email above.
25 Feb 2016, Filip writes: The Polish word for (nose) “bogey” is “babol” – at least around the place where I live; not a word you can hear on TV that often, so I suspect some regional variation. Some Polish dictionaries also give “babok” as a synonym for “babol” – but for me, personally, “babok” is not nose stuff, but rather… a monster (for frightening kids). Actually, I found the following piece of information in a 1867 book on Polish folklore: “Babok” is some kind of a monster. Crying children are frightened with “babok” near Nieszawa, Brześć, etc. “Babok” might be in the nose as well when it is running. PS. And here is a song on “baboks”:
Bruce T: and it’s connection to boggarts. The term boogerman has perplexed me for years. Was it a use of an established term to correct the habit small children have of eating, well, boogers, by connecting the behavior to an older entity who would come and get you for doing such a thing? Or did it have more to with death from disease via upper respiratory ailments in childhood in the days before antibiotics ie; the Boogerman comes to take the weak children away? My guess would be the latter, but from being whacked a couple times for doing the former in my early years, it wouldn’t surprise me either. The Boogieman of my youth could get you for any number of things the women in my family happened to find offensive. That last line reminds me of something. It was always women in my youth who invoked the Boogieman in it’s full fury. The men would mention it in a kidding manner to the boys from early that let you know, “That stuff isn’t real, kid.” The opening salvo in the battle of the sexes?
