booby

[prettygoodword]

booby (BOO-bee) - n., any of six tropical seabirds (genus Sula, of the gannet family) with a bright bill, bright beak, or both.


Yes, there are other meanings, and one is even relevant here, but this is birb week so the main entry is all about the suberb birb:


Thanks, WikiMedia!

The relevance is that these birds are traditionally considered to be stupid because, since they nest in places without predators, they can be easily caught when they land on ships at sea -- and so were named after booby meaning a stupid person. Like much slang, the etymology is obscure, but almost all dictionaries agree that either either from or influenced by Spanish bobo, a stupid or naïve person, from Latin balbus, stammering. (The other meaning of booby, a breast, has a different origin: it's an alteration (started in America in the 1930s) of earlier form bubby, from German via Pennsylvania Dutch.)


And that's the last birb for the week, because it's the last word (worb?) for the week.

---L.

Comments

[lokifan]

omgggg amazing

[dhampyresa]

I love boobies! They're so cute! I'm so happy they have this double meaning name because I'd never had heard of them otherwise and they are fucking adorable.

[prettygoodword]

And you know you want that handsome guy with his stunning blue feet. He's quite willing to strut them for you, too. Most awesome blue feet ever, yeah baby.

[prettygoodword]

And yanno, while the blue-footed guys get most of the press, it turns out there's also red-footed boobies too!