The question came up: If referring to a person as a word for a female body part in an insulting manner is sexist, then isn’t calling a man a “boob” sexist?

(I may or may not have referred to some guy as a boob.)

My first reaction was to simply say, “No, because a boob, in this sense has nothing to do with female body parts. It is a dunce, idiot, stupid or bumbling person, etc.” However, often, when we make assumptions about the origin of a word we are wrong. And since part of that conversation was about whether using the word “hysterical” was sexist, even if one did not know the origin of the term, I thought I’d better look it (boob) up. So I did. Turns out, I was right. “Boob” is just what I say above. So now you know.

But in the process of looking it up I came across another tidbit which is much more obscure, probably wrong, and won’t be of much interest to most people but it was of interest to me so I’ll mention it. It is probably true (as I had assumed) that “boob” comes from “booby”, and here’s the description from Dictionary.com of the origin of “booby”:

1590–1600; earlier pooby, apparently blend of poop to befool (now obsolete) and baby; ( def. 2 ) perhaps by association with Spanish bobo < Latin balbus stuttering.

And what is interesting about this is that even though the Spanish “bobo” may derive from the Latin “balbus” it is also true that in parts of Central Africa, the word “bobo” means someone who does not speak at all, does not speak properly, speaks foolishly, or who does not speak the prevailing languages. There are, of course, Portuguese words spoken in the same region because of the Portuguese influence on KiSwahili which then became an overarching trade language and, in turn, influenced other languages. So the language from which I know “bobo” is KiNande, but it could also be KiNguana, a western dialect of KiSwahili

The on line Living KiSwahili Dictionary has “bobo” as referring to two distinct nuts. I can verify the use of “bobo” to refer to one of these nuts on Google Translator. I’m not much impressed by that because once you get outside of Tanzania, animal and plant names in KiSwahili are probably often local non-KiSwahili names absorbed by the language. (The KiNande dictionary does not list the word at all.)

Finally, I looked “bobo” up in Portuguese … in that language, “bobo” means fool. Perfect. The term is shared by Spanish and Portuguese, and apparently, at least one obscure Central African language which has other Portuguese words in it from colonial times.

So, when someone calls you a boob, they are expressing a sentiment that has been expressed around the world in many languages, although not necessarily about you in particular. The origin of the word is probably still Latin, spread via Portuguese colonization in East Africa into that region where perhaps it resides here and there atop the other local languages, but not necessarily in KiSwahili or any of its many variants. We need to send linguists to check KiNande (aka Konzu) for more Portuguese.

Meanwhile, is there any chance at all that “boob” as in “fool” comes from “boob” as in “breast”? I think not, but in case you are still giving that any consideration let me remind you of an important linguistic rule. Everything is a word for female breasts; at one time or another, any given word may or may not be used as slang to refer to breasts. I’m not sure why that is the case, but it seems to be.

The problem is, they are being poisoned by knowledge…(Except in Texas.) Continue reading As a parent, I expect my children to act and think exactly as I do →

Or, perhaps, not? I was.

The minor league baseball game is on Friday, August 10th, and it is sponsored by the Minnesota Atheists. The local team, the Saint Paul Saints, will change their name to the Mr. Paul Aints for the occasion. If you are in the greater Twin Cities area please try to get to the game! I’m not sure if the discount Minnesota Atheists tickets are still available, but there will certainly be some seats still for sale somewhere in the stadium.

Now, you are probably already guessing that when an organised Atheist group gets together with a sports team to do something together, there will be…well, drama. And you’d be right if you guessed that. We of the Minnesota Atheists and their allies are taking it all in stride, of course, but there are some interesting conversations happening.

If you want more information about the game via links, and you want to explore the drama a bit, you can visit this post which includes a Letter to the Editor that I wrote that was actually printed.

See you at the game!

I’ve started a new, modest but I think good, project on The X Blog. I’ve dragged out and dusted off, and rewritten and reorganized, a selected series of essays that I wrote few years ago but were not widely read, especailly by you if you are fairly new to this blog. I’m going to be posting a few a week. The original corpus is about 40 or so essays in total but I’m combining some and it is quite possible that I’ll toss some aside as I get to them because I am trying to be selective.

Originally, these essays were written in batches, or as part of a theme, and there are several different batches or themes among them. But I realized the other day that they are also personal-historical and can be roughly ordered in relation to my own personal time line. (Hey, maybe I should post them as “events” on my Facebook page?!? Gotta use that time line thing for something!) So I’ve ordered them that way, which amuses me, though I’m sure it will mean little to anyone reading them.

I’d been planning on doing this for a while, but the impetus for doing it right now came from a conversation I had with a colleague. We are planning something that would require that we get hold of a blimp or Zeppelin or something. Some kind of airship. We’re working on that, and I’m sure you’ll hear about it if it happens. You see, the thing is, the first in this series of essays relates to blimps. And frightening nightmares and dead pets. An Nazis.

Please visit the X Blog and have a look at “Thump“

The smartest radio talk show in the world addresses ignorance, Sunday.

Skeptically Speaking # 174: Ignorance

This week, we’re looking at how the basic condition of not knowing things provides the motivation to keep science moving. We’re joined by Stuart Firestein, Chair of Columbia University’s Department of Biological Sciences, to talk about his book Ignorance: How It Drives Science. And on the podcast, we’re joined by Toronto attorney Adam Wygodny, to talk using the law to protect consumers from ineffective and untested alternative medicine products.

We record live with Stuart Firestein on Sunday, July 22 at 6 pm MT. The podcast will be available to download at 9 pm MT on Friday, July 27.

Details here.