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.
Leave a comment
2 comments
More from this show
If you start the phrase when in Rome… but don’t finish the sentence with do as the Romans do, or say birds of a feather… without adding flock together, you’re engaging in anapodoton, a term of rhetoric that refers to the...
There are many proposed origins for the exclamation of surprise, holy Toledo! But the most likely one involves not the city in Ohio, but instead Toledo, Spain, which has been a major religious center for centuries in the traditions of both Islam and...
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by Little Richard in 1956, the second iteration of this phrase sounds (at least to me) as if the word “fool” has been replaced by “boo.”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by Little Richard in 1956, the second iteration of this phrase sounds (at least to me) as if the word “fool” has been replaced by “boo.”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.”