Entry tags:
of bugs and balls
Errant thought from a while back:
"I remember when mice used to have balls."
.
I'd been trying to remember this word: Boggart, which I once learned from a Susan Cooper book, as I could imagine a boggart being behind the weird bug-related mystery I've been trying to solve.
After a while, the supernatural explanations seemed as likely as any others I came up with.
"These bugs must have the power of invisibility!"
"Maybe they aren't invisible bugs; maybe they are ghosts."
I remembered a mischievous supernatural creature that was a boggart, but it took me a while to remember the word.
Fittingly, it turns out that boggart and bug even share the same etymology!
"I remember when mice used to have balls."
.
I'd been trying to remember this word: Boggart, which I once learned from a Susan Cooper book, as I could imagine a boggart being behind the weird bug-related mystery I've been trying to solve.
After a while, the supernatural explanations seemed as likely as any others I came up with.
"These bugs must have the power of invisibility!"
"Maybe they aren't invisible bugs; maybe they are ghosts."
I remembered a mischievous supernatural creature that was a boggart, but it took me a while to remember the word.
Fittingly, it turns out that boggart and bug even share the same etymology!
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I also didn't realize that "bugs" as in "Bugs Bunny" meant "crazy"...
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-hardened-gangsters-got-the-cute-name-bugsy
“bugsy” came from comparisons to someone who’d been driven insane by bugs. To call someone “bugs,” or refer to a person as “bugsy” was to call them crazy, or unstable.
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The more common verb "boggle" comes from the same root too, which I wouldn't have guessed:
https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=boggle