baleboosta
n.— «She was, in the truest sense, a baleboosta, a Yiddish term meaning a remarkable cook and “boss of the kitchen.” My father tells stories of her legendary cooking: Rolling out enough dough to cover the kitchen table to make homemade soup noodles, roasting a chicken to perfection, making matzo balls as light as feathers.» —“Grandma’s Rosh Hashana cake was a honey” by Andrea Abel Star Tribune (Minneapolis, Minnesota) SEpt. 13, 2006. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Jasmine from Miami, Florida, asks about the word boo as a term of endearment, as in Alicia Keys’ song “My Boo.” This use of boo has been especially common in Black English since the 1980s, occupying the same affectionate space as honey or baby. The...
Daniel Mendelsohn is a widely acclaimed author, critic, classicist, and professor at Bard College. A few years ago, when he was teaching an undergraduate seminar on The Odyssey (Bookshop|Amazon) his 81-year-old father, Jay, decided to sit in on the...