Bandoozer and Other Fake Swear Words

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Yes, hello.

This is Sarah from Elk Rapids, Michigan.

Hi Sarah, we’re glad to have you.

What’d you call us about today?

So well, I’ve always been curious about a word that turned up in our family lore.

It’s from a story that my mom told me when she was talking about her childhood.

So it’s something that happened, I guess, about a hundred years ago and she told that when she and her younger brother and sister were at the age when swear words became quite enticing to them.

My grandparents, who were upstanding citizens, were a little perturbed about this and kind of appalled.

So they cooked up a scheme.

And so one day when the three children were at the dining table, grandma and grandpa went into the next room, and my grandfather said in a slightly louder than usual voice to my grandmother, Oh oh, you know so and so I he’s just an old band doozer.

And my grandmother quickly shushed him and she said Oh not so loud, dear the children might hear.

So of course the children’s ears perked right up when they overheard their parents talking.

And the word bandwoozer instantly became their very favorite.

So they really thought they were hot stuff when they slung that word around.

So I guess my question is, was band user an actual word in that time frame or was it something my grandfather just simply made up?

So your story is so wonderful.

I can’t even believe it, Sarah.

So they manufactured this word, I’m pretty sure.

Did they tell you over the years?

I mean, did it was it passed down to you now that you’re an adult that this word was invented?

Well, they I I never talked about it with my grandparents, I guess, but and I don’t remember if they had passed at the time my mother told me about this.

I mean I’ve heard of bamboozles, but banozer just seemed to be something that they had used.

So I couldn’t tell where it originally.

Yeah.

Well yeah, everything that I know about swearing and I kind of have this sideline of swearing says that it’s a an invented word from your family’s story.

But that idea of creating a fake swear word, that one has got some legs.

Many people have done that with their children or their classrooms.

We had a caller Martha, if you remember, tell us that Saka Puntas, which means pencil sharpener in Spanish was was their fake swear word.

And and there’s a wonderful book, by the way, Sarah, about fake swearing.

It’s called the Craptastic Book of Pudose Swearing by Michelle Whitty, W-I-T-T-E, and you can find it as an ebook on bookshop.org and other online booksellers.

There’s a lot of this stuff, a lot of from popular entertainment, like in science fiction alone, there’s Gorum from Firefly, Smeg from Red to Warf, Frack from Battlestar Galactica, and Frell from Farscape, and there’s even more, but but like so many fake swear words have been invented.

Well that is fascinating.

It’s a wonderful tradition, I think.

Yeah, it seemed it seemed to work.

At least it worked well for the first week or so until the kids discovered it really was not a word like that.

Oh, it only lasted a week.

I was hoping this was like a lifetime thing that they only found out on like the grandparents’ deathbed.

That’s not a word.

So perhaps it it spread in the among their friends.

Who knows?

Who knows?

But I will tell you that it doesn’t appear in any of the reference works that I know.

Oh well.

One thing I want to leave you with before we go, in children’s lore, there’s also fake gestures, fake offensive gestures.

So for example, instead of holding up the middle finger, you hold up your pinky finger.

So it’s not just words that we fake when we’re trying to do pretend swearing or pretend naughty behavior.

I’ll have to keep all of that in mind for my grandchildren You do that, Sarah.

Thank you so much for calling.

Yeah, take care of yourself.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate your looking into it for me.

Mystery solved.

Yeah.