# Do you know the word "bogue"? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 8, 2006, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-the-word-bogue/347499 "2006-03-08T04:48:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![CookingWithGas](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cookingwithgas/32/485_2.png) [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-the-word-bogue/347499/41 "2006-03-09T18:20:37Z")
I heard it for the first time when I arrived in Ann Arbor to start college in 1975. I heard it only from my friends from the Detroit area, but they _all_ said it. Never heard it since I left there in '83. ---
**Author:** ![Missy2U](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/3bc359/32.png) [@Missy2U](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Missy2U)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-the-word-bogue/347499/42 "2006-03-09T18:55:13Z")
> [@NurseCarmen](#): > > I’m from Minnesota, and that is the only way I’ve ever heard bogue used. _“Don’t bogue the J dude”_ I’m from the SW burbs of Chicago - ditto. Oh - and it was when I was in high school - early 80’s. ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-the-word-bogue/347499/43 "2006-03-09T19:03:27Z")
East Coast 30-something here; never heard of it. Boo-zhee I heard from black friends in college tho. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-the-word-bogue/347499/44 "2006-03-09T19:21:25Z")
> [@NurseCarmen](#): > > I’m from Minnesota, and that is the only way I’ve ever heard bogue used. _“Don’t bogue the J dude”_ Note, however, that you were employing a truncated form of the verb _Bog_[_art_], not the adjective _bogue_. ---
**Author:** ![Odinoneeye](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/97f17d/32.png) [@Odinoneeye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odinoneeye)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-the-word-bogue/347499/45 "2006-03-09T22:37:36Z")
> [@Electronic Chaos](#): > > Are you sure you’ve got the right spelling? A define: query through Google only turns up one hit, referring to a nautical term. > > I suppose the term could just be an alteration of ‘bogus’ which was extremely regional and never caught on. I’ve never heard it, and I lived in Michigan about the same time (granted, I moved away when I was 7, so I probably didn’t get to pick up on all the ‘hip’ terms). I always thought it was the other way around. I grew up in Michigan, near Detroit (Livonia for those who know) and it was a daily part of elementary life (the 70s). I didn’t hear bogus until years later and always thought it was what bogue had turned into. ---
**Author:** ![tsarina](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f4b2a3/32.png) [@tsarina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tsarina)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-the-word-bogue/347499/46 "2006-03-10T04:44:42Z")
> [@lavenderviolet](#): > > I spent the first 22 years of my life living near Detroit, but yet I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone use that word. I do know of a street named “Bogue” in East Lansing, though. Interesting… This was a running joke during my college days. Every time someone would give you directions - “Then, turn right on Bogue”, it was practically mandatory that you had to say “Dude, that’s so _bogue_” in a deadpan Keanu Reeves voice. My brother and I said it when we were kids in Monroe (SE Michigan) during the 80’s. ---
**Author:** ![Queen\_Tonya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/4491bb/32.png) [@Queen\_Tonya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Queen_Tonya)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-the-word-bogue/347499/47 "2006-03-10T05:11:00Z")
Huh, that was just us then? Who’da thunk it! ---
**Author:** ![GilaB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8e7dd6/32.png) [@GilaB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GilaB)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-the-word-bogue/347499/48 "2006-03-10T18:12:16Z")
I only know it from _Middlesex_, by Jeffrey Eugenides, which has some scenes set among teenage girls outside Detroit circa 1970. I’ve never heard it otherwise. FWIW, I’m from New Jersey, and in my mid-twenties. ---
**Author:** ![Godfrey\_Daniels](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Godfrey\_Daniels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Godfrey_Daniels)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2006, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-the-word-bogue/347499/49 "2006-03-10T18:32:38Z")
I’ve lived in the PNW for 35 years and not only have heard this word, but still have friends who use it now and then. But with a different meaning. Here, it means to flake out or be a no-show, like promising to show up for a Saturday morning foursome and getting too drunk the night before to make it. Like answering the phone on Saturday morning to hear “Hey, Harry bogued on us, we need to find us another pigeon.” ---
**Author:** ![BlackNGold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/779978/32.png) [@BlackNGold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlackNGold)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2006, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-the-word-bogue/347499/50 "2006-03-11T18:43:44Z")
> [@Godfrey Daniels](#): > > Like answering the phone on Saturday morning to hear “Hey, Harry bogued on us, we need to find us another pigeon.” We also used this as a verb (although I would have spelled it “boge”, still rhyming with vogue) meaning to run as fast as possible. As in “I was bogin’ down the sideline, when out of nowhere…” Someitime in the mid-70s. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2006, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-the-word-bogue/347499/51 "2006-03-11T21:19:54Z")
> [@Godfrey Daniels](#): > > I’ve lived in the PNW for 35 years and not only have heard this word, but still have friends who use it now and then. But with a different meaning. Here, it means to flake out or be a no-show, like promising to show up for a Saturday morning foursome and getting too drunk the night before to make it. > Like answering the phone on Saturday morning to hear “Hey, Harry bogued on us, we need to find us another pigeon.” This would be an interesting connection (if real, and not simply coincidental). There are quite a few transplanted Michiganders in the PNW. I wonder if they took “bogue” with them in the early 1980s, and it shifted meaning after they got there. I’ll have to ask my (MSU graduate) sister, BIL, and brother if they are still using the word–and with what meaning, these days–in Seattle. ---
**Author:** ![minor7flat5](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/minor7flat5/32/258_2.png) [@minor7flat5](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minor7flat5)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2006, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-the-word-bogue/347499/52 "2006-03-12T05:16:50Z")
> [@BlackNGold](#): > > We also used this as a verb (although I would have spelled it “boge”, still rhyming with vogue) meaning to run as fast as possible. As in “I was bogin’ down the sideline, when out of nowhere…” Someitime in the mid-70s. Never heard it as a verb. Perhaps this usage is a derivative of “boogy” – “I was boogyin’ down the sideline, when out of nowhere…” ---
**Author:** ![BlackNGold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/779978/32.png) [@BlackNGold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlackNGold)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2006, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-the-word-bogue/347499/53 "2006-03-12T14:25:06Z")
> [@minor7flat5](#): > > Never heard it as a verb. Perhaps this usage is a derivative of “boogy” – “I was boogyin’ down the sideline, when out of nowhere…” I always related it to “bookin’”, meaning the same thing but equally nonsensical. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2006, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-the-word-bogue/347499/54 "2006-03-12T17:29:57Z")
> [@BlackNGold](#): > > I always related it to “bookin’”, meaning the same thing but equally nonsensical. Book originally meant to check out of a place, such as a motel. (Book in, then book out.) It later came to mean “to depart,” took on the connotation of “depart quickly” and then transferred over to simply “move quickly.” As to nonsensical–that describes most slang etymologies, to say nothing of most other etymologies. ---
**Author:** ![rippingtons\_fan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rippingtons_fan/32/11767_2.png) [@rippingtons\_fan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rippingtons_fan)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2006, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-the-word-bogue/347499/55 "2006-03-12T21:21:32Z")
Then there was Merwyn Bogue who was “Ishkabibble” in Kaye Kaiser’s band in the 1940’s. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-the-word-bogue/347499.md?page=2)