poot-butt
n.— «Poot-butt—A square; someone who doesn’t know what’s happening; often a child.» —“Examples of Black Vernacular” Hartford Courant (Connecticut) Dec. 30, 1973. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
John in Omaha, Nebraska, wonders about a phrase that encourages someone to attend an event or risk being left out or feeling uncool: be there or be square. Don’t fall for the fake etymology about people wearing boxes on their heads! Ditto for...
When a listener from Buffalo, New York, was a child, she was told to stop being so rutschy, or in other words, to stop being so “fidgety.” Rutsch, meaning “to squirm,” and its variants, which include rooch and roosh, come...