The leaves are turning colour, the air has a chill to it and the days are getting shorter, so all indications point to the approach of Halloween, a favourite North American celebration for children and those of us who are kids at heart.
Among the children trick or treating at doors throughout the continent, there always a number of ghosts – they’re spooky and it’s always easy to cut a few holes in a white sheet, after all. It’s no surprise when some of these wee ghosties shout, “Boo,” at those who hand out treats. It’s what ghosts say, after all. But why? And where did it all begin?
Linguistically speaking, Boo as an interjection meant to frighten is easy to explain. The B is an explosive sound; when coupled with the roaring sound made by “oo,” it is startling, indeed. The brevity of the exclamation may also make it scarier.
The origin of the term is more uncertain. The exclamation has been used to scare people as far back as the 17th century; the Oxford English Dictionary offers a quotation from the periodical, Remembrancer (1628, VIII 261): “When a child cryes boh To fright his Nurse.” A 2014 linguistics study maintains that the earliest references to the term come from the 1738 work, Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence Display’d, by Gilbert Croakatt and Jacob Curate, a pseudonym for John Monroe. They define it as “a word that is used in the north of Scotland to frighten crying children.”
The renowned 19th-century Scottish novelist, Sir Walter Scott, wrote, “We start and are afraid when we hear one cry Boh!” in his 1830 Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, defining it as “an exclamation intended to surprise or frighten.”
Although most European cultures understand the term as one intended to scare, notes writer Forrest Wickman, in France, you might shout, “Hou,” while in Czech, people cry, “Baf!”
What’s even scarier is that the word has morphed, as words are wont to do in living languages, into a modern term that refers to one’s boyfriend/girlfriend or significant other. Boo, in that case, is thought to derive from the French term, beau.
So, now that you’ve enhanced your understanding of frightening terms, on Halloween, you’re entitled to hand out Smarties!
supergrammarian 