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Interesting word derivations - can you do better than this?

22:45 / 14.04.03

...and Orange comes originally from from the ancient Sanskrit "naga ranga" meaning fatal indigestion for elephants

Following on from Xoc's post of this little gem in the 'things people think you say in your country...' thread, I thought it would be mildy entertaining to have one which is dedicated to such treasures.

17:15 / 15.04.03

Have to say that there are less imaginative derivations of the word about but I rather liked that one. It came from this site where there were a few other quirky etymological ascriptions I liked:

Boogie - originally from m'bugi (West African Ki-Kongo language) meaning "devilishly good"

Pal - that good old Scottish term for friend, containing just enough menace to warn off the unwary, originally comes from a Roma or Romany word for "brother"

Sleazy - because faith in the fine cloth that had made the region of Silesia famous became persistently undermined by low-grade imitations and "Silesian" mutated in English into the more sleazy sounding "sleazy". I retain my faith in sleazenation's fine choice of shirts nevertheless.

and, at the bottom of that webpage there's a link to a longer list of loan words, including:

Anaconda comes from the Tamil for "having killed an elephant" (dangerous lives Indian elephants lead, what with killer fruit and big snakes to contend with)

Avocado is originally from the Nahuatl (Aztec language) word ahuacatl meaning testicle

Goolies for testicles, originally from a Hindi word for balls or bullets

and Muslin, means (topically) linen from Mosul via ancient Syriac

I am such a sad, sad bastard...

18:33 / 15.04.03

Not a sad bastard, just a bit of a Greenland Inuit waterproof hooded jacket.

18:47 / 15.04.03

I've read that Boogie in the sense of Boogie Man came from the Bugis tribe of Indonesia. Or, I should say, the dreaded Bugis pirates of Indonesia.

They're still there, you know. In their boats. Although they terrorize far fewer British colonialists nowadays.
And are thus no longer used to terrify the children back home.

Even more frightening to staid colonialists, the Bugis have five genders.

18:53 / 15.04.03

Interesting second article Grant, but I think the Calabai-as-wedding-planner is a bit of a tired stereotype.

19:10 / 15.04.03

I am undoubtedly an anorak, H.I.R. Having now admitted this to myself, I can enthuse wholeheartedly over grant's revelations about the Bugis. Perhaps some connection also to Bugis Street, the infamous Reeperbahn of Singapore?

In my youth in Scotland, we called that bad guy "The Bogie Man". This led to a terror of being caught nosepicking, since bogies or bogles were also the words for the crusty nasal effluvia beloved of small children everywhere.

A bogle was also a word for a kind of supernatural creature, maybe some celtic inheritance?

Doesn't explain my teenage crush of Humphrey Bogart (Bogey) or perhaps it does in some horrid subconscious way... I have always been attracted to a good nose on a man, which would explain my attraction to Trunkboy.

I seem to recall learning that Freud spent much of his youth pursuing a similar obsession with the nose as a metaphor and seat of emotion before he hit paydirt with his better known theories.

But enough threadrot about my nasal nous.

21:12 / 15.04.03

Boggart, bogan, bugaboo and bugbear would seem to come from the same root, which predates British adventures in Indonesia—the Old English bugge, meaning either terror itself, or something terrifying (Caxton's Bible: "Ye shalle not feare any bugges in the night"); it's possibly from the Old Welsh bwg, which may have originally been a word for a scarecrow.

Which explains why the end derivative bug is still used to describe not only creepy-crawly things, but states of mind—irritation ("Don't bug me!") and obsession ("He's got the gambling bug")—and plague ("He's got a stomach bug").

21:33 / 15.04.03

Starting in Jamaica in the early '90s the main dance trend was the Bogle dance-step. How does that connect, I wonder? My small son doesn't grow bogies, boogers, bogles up his nose, he has "horribles". Yeh, I started that one and I can't remember how or why!

22:00 / 15.04.03

A return to the roots of the word, of course. That's lovely.

I like to do that, occasionally—to use the archaic or original form of words: because, really, what fun is "daffodil" once you know that it's really "daffydowndilly"? And isn't "bone-fire" so much more satisfying in the mouth than "bonfire"?