Discussion Groups / ESL Teaching / August 2004

http://www.languagehat.com/archives/001124.php
SAFIRE'S BOGEYMAN.
This week's "On Language" column by the jovial and often clueless William
Safire focuses mainly on the word bogeyman, alias boogeyman. Safire claims
there's a transition from the latter to the former in progress; I think the
latter is a colloquial/childish version of the former, which has always
predominated in formal contexts. A section of the tax code (cited by Safire)
is a bogeyman; the thing that's gonna getcha if you don't watch out is a
boogeyman. Furthermore, I seriously doubt his hypothesis that political
correctness is involved; I certainly never associated the word with the
rather obscure racial slur boogie, and I doubt many people do, though (as
always) I'm willing to be corrected.

But what really surprised me was his use of the word scarifying in this
context:

 It's apparent that the boogieman, bogeyman and (in the U.S. South)
boogerman or buggabear is a monster, evil spirit, hobgoblin or chimera
racing through our language, used by nefarious alarmists to frighten small
children and innocent voters. He is known to Germans as Boggelmann, to the
Irish as bocan, to the Scottish as boggart and to Icelanders as the
linguistically related puki. Earliest citation I can find is in Old French,
around 1200, as Bugibu, and in the Middle Ages the dark figure's name became
synonymous with the Devil, one of whose names was Old Bogey. There could be
a connection with the scarifying ''Boo!''