Re: CHAT: "boocoo"

>I think of it as 1960s-era slang: I don't use it myself, but my wife (15
>years older) does.  My guess would be that it came into the language from
>Vietnamese pidgin.  OTOH, m-w.com labels it "mostly Southern U.S.", and
>she is a Southerner; this may represent influence from Louisiana French.
>On the gripping hand, there were and are a lot more Southerners in the
>army, for reasons ranging from family tradition to economic hard times.
Having grown up people my parents' age (would be in their late 80's now)
saying ["buku:], and knowing that they had no contact at all with Louisiana
or the Cajun dialect, I've always assumed this came from their having fought
in France in World War 2.

>Googling shows that "boocoo bucks" is a particularly common collocation.
>And then there's "wooly boocoo shay avay mwah!"  (I swear I am not
>making this up: see www.x10.com/news/news/0925_song.htm)
LOL. That site is referencing how people mis-hear song lyrics, one of the
classics being "Gladly, the crossed-eyed bear" from "Gladly the cross I'd
bear".
>One of the two compression schemes for Unicode is called BOCU-1 (no
>coincidence).
>
>--
>John Cowan  jcowan@reutershealth.com  www.ccil.org/~cowan
>www.reutershealth.com
>"In computer science, we stand on each other's feet."
>         --Brian K. Reid
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