[TUHS] Bugs, Bööge and Bogeymen (was: 70th anniversary of (official) programming errors)

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@lemis.com>]

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On Friday, 18 June 2021 at 16:19:37 -0400, John Cowan wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 16, 2021 at 5:57 PM Steffen Nurpmeso <steffen@sdaoden.eu> wrote:
>
>> (Only to clarify that ???bögge??? is not a German word to the best of my
>> knowledge.  I was looking, as it sounded so »northern«,
>
> And so it is: it's Low Saxon, and also exists in the compound form
> "böggel-mann", plainly cognate to British English "bogeyman", American
> English "boogeyman".

Well, there are ways to check these things, especially since Steffen
came up with alternatives.  As they say, „Was weiß Duden?“.

From https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Boeoegg:

  wohl gekürzt aus älter schweizerisch Böggelmann, Bölimann =
  Schreckgestalt, Kobold, Herkunft ungeklärt; vgl. als ähnliche
  Bezeichnung englisch bog(e)y (man) = Schreckgespenst, litauisch
  bužỹs = (ausgestopfte) Schreckgestalt

In other words, a Swiss German word with a derivation similar to what
you expected.  I hadn't expected that (the Swiss connection).  The OED
entry is way out of date (1887) and has nothing useful to say except:

  Found in literature only recently; old people vouched (1887) for its
  use in the nursery as early as 1825, but only as proper name (sense
  1). Possibly a southern nursery form of bogle , boggle , and boggard
  , or going back like them to a simpler form which, as mentioned
  under bog n.1 and bogle n., may be a variant of bugge , bug n.1
  ‘terror, bugbear, scarecrow’. But in the absence of evidence,
  positive statements concerning its relation to these words cannot be
  made.

Greg
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