On Friday, 18 June 2021 at 16:19:37 -0400, John Cowan wrote: > On Wed, Jun 16, 2021 at 5:57 PM Steffen Nurpmeso 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 The OED entry is way out of date (1887) and has nothing useful to say except: Found in literature only recently; old people vouched (1887) for its use in the nursery as early as 1825, but only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 -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA.php