Verb.—To ease oneself; to evacuate.—See Bury a Quaker.
Bogey.—See Bogy.
Boggle-De-Botch, Boggledy-Botch, subs. (colloquial).—A bungle; ‘mess’;
‘hash.’ [From boggle, ‘to fumble,’ ‘to bungle,’ + botch, ‘to bungle’ or
‘to construct clumsily.’] Boggle by itself is more frequently employed.
1834. Miss Edgeworth, Helen, ch. xxvi. A fine boggle-de-botch I
have made of it.... I am aware it is not a canonical
word,—classical, I mean; nor in nor out of any dictionary
perhaps—but when people are warm, they cannot stand picking terms.
Bog-House, Bog-Shop, subs. (low).—A privy; a necessary house. The term,
as will be seen, is an old one. [The derivation is probably from bog, a
morass of decaying matter; a soft, spongy place.] For synonyms, see
Bury a Quaker and Mrs. Jones.
1671. R. Head, English Rogue, pt. I., ch. xii., p. 123 (1874).
Fearing I should catch cold, they out of pity covered me warm in a
bogg-house.
1703. Ward, London Spy, pt. III., p. 47. Its walls being adorn’d
with as many unsavoury Finger-dabs as an Inns of Court Bog-house.
1754. B. Martin, Eng. Dict., 2 ed. Bog-house, a privy, or
necessary-house.
Boglander, subs. (old).—An Irishman. [From the boggy and marshy
character of a considerable portion of the Emerald Isle.] Cf.,
Bog-trotter.
1698–1700. Ward, London Spy, pt. XVI., p. 383. [Boglander is the
name applied to an Irishman in this work.]
1785. Grose, Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. Bog Lander, an
Irishman. Ireland being famous for its large bogs which furnish the
chief fuel in many parts of that kingdom.
1811. Lexicon Balatronicum. [The same definition given as in
Grose.]
Bog Latin, subs. (Irish).—A spurious mode of speech simulating the
Latin in construction.—See Dog Latin.
Bog-Oranges, subs. (popular).—Potatoes. The phrase is an allusion to
the vegetable in question forming a very substantial food staple of the
Irish peasantry, with whom, in the popular mind, potatoes are largely
associated. Hence probably the nickname. Cf., Murphy. [Oranges, from
the shape, + bog = Irish, Bogland being a humorous nick-name for the
Emerald Isle.]
Bog-trotter, subs. (familiar).—A satirical name for an Irishman.
Camden, however [c. 1605], speaking of the ‘debateable land’ on the
borders of England and Scotland, says, ‘both these dales breed notable
bog-trotters.’ From this the original sense would appear to have been
one accustomed to walk across bogs. As a nickname for an Irishman, it
dates at least from 1671.
1671. R. Head, English Rogue, pt. I., ch. xxvii. (Repr. 1874), p.
232. [Irishmen are spoken of as bog-trotters in this work.]
1859. Sala, Gaslight and Daylight, ch. xxix. Gaunt reapers and
bog-trotters in those traditional blue body-coats, leathern smalls,
and bell-crowned hats, that seem to be manufactured nowhere save in
Ireland.
Bog-trotting, adj. (familiar).—A contemptuous epithet applied to one
living among bogs; e.g., a bog-trotting Irishman.
1758–65. Goldsmith, On Quack Doctors (Essays and Poems, 1836), p.
127. Rock advises the world to beware of bog-trotting quacks.
1849. Thackeray, Pendennis, I., p. 169. The impudent, bog-trotting
scamp dare not threaten me!
1876. C. Hindley, Adventures of a Cheap Jack, p. 191. ‘What do you
mean by calling me Irish? it is you that are Irish, you——.’ ‘Ha!
ha! ha! ha!’ jerked out Fagan. ‘There, I tould you so. He can’t
stand to be called by his true name; the bog-trotting rascal denies
his Ould Ireland for a mother.’
Bogus, adj. (American, now common).—Spurious: fictitious; a term
applied to anything sham, or to that which is not what it professes to
be. Various accounts, some of them of a circumstantial character, are
given as to the genesis of this word. One thing only seems certain; and
that is its American origin. The generally received derivation,
hitherto, has been that given by the Boston Courier (12 June, 1857) to
the effect that the word is a vile corruption of the Italian name
Borghese, a notorious swindler, who about the year 1837 literally
flooded the Western and South-western States with fictitious cheques,
notes, and bills of exchange and similar securities to an enormous
amount. It is said that the name was gradually corrupted first to
borges and then to bogus, and the man Borghese being associated in the
popular mind with doubtful money transactions, his name so corrupted
into bogus became applied to fraudulent papers and practices, and
latterly to any spurious or counterfeit object, as bogus money, hair,
diamonds, accusations, etc. Yet another suggestion is one put forward
by Mr. Jas. Russell Lowell. He thinks it has descended in a corrupted
form from the French Bagasse, the refuse of the sugar cane after the
juice has been expressed. This worthless product has, it is suggested,
given the name to other worthless things having travelled from
Louisiana up the Mississippi, and thence throughout the Union, finally
spreading itself over the English speaking world. A few, however,
affect to regard it as a corruption of [hocus] pocus, and say that it
refers to the German ‘Hocus Pocus Imperatus, wer nicht sieht ist
blind.’
The latest light upon the history of the word is thrown, as usual, by
the indefatigable Dr. Murray, who, while slily satirising the ‘bogus
derivations circumstantially given,’ makes another attempt to solve the
riddle. He says: ‘Dr. S. Willard, of Chicago, in a letter to the editor
of this Dictionary, quotes from the Painesville (Ohio) Telegraph of
July 6 and Nov. 2, 1827, the word bogus as a subs., applied to an
apparatus for coining false money. Mr. Eber D. Howe, who was then
editor of that paper, describes in his Autobiography (1878) the
discovery of such a piece of mechanism in the hands of a gang of
coiners at Painesville, in May, 1827; it was a mysterious looking
object, and some one in the crowd styled it a bogus, a designation
adopted in the succeeding numbers of the paper. Dr. Willard considers
this to have been short for tantrabogus, a word familiar to him from
his childhood, and which in his father’s time was commonly applied in
Vermont to any ill-looking object; he points out that tantarabobs is
given in Halliwell as a Devonshire word for the devil.’ [Bogus seems
thus to be related to bogy, etc.]
1825. Hughes, in J. Ludlow’s Hist. U.S., 338. This precious house
of representatives—the bogus legislature as it was at once called.
1869. S. L. Clemens (‘Mark Twain’) Innocents at Home, ch. xvii.
Nobody had ever received his bogus history as gospel before; its
genuineness had always been called in question either by words or
looks; but here was a man that not only swallowed it all down, but
was grateful for the dose.
1874. M. Collins, Frances, ch. xxxv. ‘They’ve got some good money,
as well as bogus notes.’
1883. Saturday Review, March 31, p. 399, col. 2. M. Soleirol had
probably a number of forged autographs of Molière; his whole
collection was a bogus assortment of frauds.
Bogy, Bogey, subs. (common).—A landlord. An attributive usage of the
more familiar meanings—(1) the devil; (2) a person much dreaded. The
transition from sense 2 to that which signifies a landlord is easy. A
French equivalent is Monsieur Vautour; vautour = a vulture; and the
term is applied to a hard-hearted landlord. In passing, it may perhaps
be mentioned (having in view the uncertainty which Murray confesses
hangs round the history of this word in its primary meanings) that ask
Bogy, as a reply to a question, occurs in Grose [1785]. It is true it
is there associated with a vulgarism which, however, on the face of it,
appears to have had little to do with the expression, except perhaps in
the not over clean mind of the burly bon-vivant who compiled the
dictionary in question. It seems to have been used much as the modern
‘God knows’! or ‘Bramah knows’ under similar circumstances. This, at
any rate, would carry it back, in very much its present form, much
earlier than 1825, Murray’s earliest trace of it. Grose says it was
‘sea wit,’ whatever that may mean.
Adj. (studios’).—Sombre, or dark in tint. Said of a painting exhibiting
these characteristics.
Bohn, subs. (American College).—A translation; a pony (q.v.). The
volumes of Bohn’s Classical Library are in such general use among
undergraduates in American Colleges, that Bohn has come to be a common
name for a translation.
1855. Songs, Biennial Jubilee, Yale College. ’Twas plenty of skin
with a good deal of bohn.
Boil, verb (old).—To betray; ‘to Peach,’ which see for synonyms.
1602. Rowlands, Greene’s Coney Catchers, 16. His cloyer or follower
fortwith boyles him, that is, bewrayes him. [M.]
1611. Middleton and Dekker, Roaring Girle, wks., 1873, III., 220.
Wee are smoakt ... wee are boyl’d, pox on her! [M.]
Boil Down, verb (popular).—To reduce in bulk by condensing or
epitomizing. When a literary work is reduced to smaller compass by the
presentation only of the main or salient features, it is said to be
boiled down. [The expression is a figurative use (quite recent
by-the-bye) of boiling down in the sense of lessening the bulk by
boiling.]
1880. Sat. Review, No. 1288, 28. It is surprising to see how much
research Mr. S. has sometimes contrived to boil down into a single
line. [M.]
1885. G. Dolly, Dickens as I Knew Him, p. 125. The newspaper and
political elements having been consulted, and their opinions having
been boiled down.
1887. H. Frederic, in Scribn. Mag., I., 479. ‘To boil down’ columns
of narrative into a few lines of bald, cold statement.
1888. Polytechnic Mag., 25 Oct., p. 258.
Whatever you have to say, my friend,
Whether witty, or grave, or gay—
Condense as much as ever you can,
And say in the readiest way;
And whether you write on rural affairs,
Or particular things in town,
Just a word of friendly advice—boil it down.
Boiled Shirt, Biled Shirt or Boiled Rag, subs. (American).—In the West,
biled shirt is the odd name given to a shirt of white linen, and it is
not difficult to see the line of reasoning from which the term derives
its significance. In the active stirring life of the West little count
is taken of the convenances of civilization, and only on Sundays and
festive occasions would the woollen undergarment be discarded for the
white linen article. Indeed, in many cases, the former would be worn
until it literally dropped to pieces. Now white shirts are facetiously
known as biled shirts all over the States, and only recently (May,
1888) a question in dispute between the employés of the Chicago Tramway
Companies and the managers of the same was whether the former should
wear, when on duty, coloured or biled shirts. Cf., Bald-faced shirt.
1854. McClure, Rocky Mountains, p. 412. In order to attend the
Governor’s reception, I borrowed a boiled shirt, and plunged in
with a Byron collar, and polished boots, and also the other
necessary apparel.
1869. S. L. Clemens (‘Mark Twain’), Innocents at Home, ch. xii. But
they were rough in those times! ... if a man wanted a fight on his
hands without any annoying delay, all he had to do was to appear in
public in a white shirt or a stove-pipe hat, and he would be
accommodated. For those people hated aristocrats. They had a
particular and malignant animosity toward what they called a biled
shirt.
1872. Dublin Univ. Mag., Feb., p. 219. Every man arrays himself in
‘store-clothes’ and boiled shirts.
1888. New York World, 13 May. Is it possible that the Chicagoans
never heard of white shirts before this spring? May be the
street-railway presidents never saw a starched shirt (I must
deplore the use of the word biled as applied to shirts) until this
year.
Boiler, subs. (Winchester College).—1. A plain coffee-pot used for
heating water. Called fourpenny and sixpenny boilers, not from their
price, but from the quantity of milk they will hold: τὸ παν boilers
were large tin saucepan-like vessels in which water for hot bidets
(q.v.) was heated.