“Boo” is a word that is closely associated with ghosts and spooky season. English speakers are often introduced to the word at a very young age. From reading a children’s book with parents to choosing a Halloween costume, the word is a Halloween staple.
The phrase dates back several hundred years in Scotland to at least the 18th century. Gilbert Crokatt mentioned the word in the 1738 polemic Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence Display’d. Noting that it was “a word that’s used in the north of Scotland to frighten crying children.”
Behind “Boo”
“Boo” was likely carried over to America by Scottish immigrants like other Halloween traditions, including the carving of jack-o’-lanterns. During the mid-1800s, thousands of Scots and Scots-Irish settled in the United States, potentially helping to make “boo” a popular ghost greeting.
English speakers started using the word regularly by at least the 1820s. Other versions of the word “boo,” such as “bo” and “boh,” are featured in literature dating back 500 years. The phrase is not too far off from the Latin word “boāre” and the Greek word “βοãv”, which mean “to cry aloud, roar, shout.”
Portrait of Walter William Skeat. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
Walter W. Skeat wrote in “Cry Bo to a Goose” in 1870 that kids would ward off aggressive waterfowl by “crying boo.” This would cause the goose to be “defeated.” In this instance, the phrase was used to show assertiveness.
A Word to Frighten Kids
Scary beings such as the bu-kow and bu-man, also have the “boo” sound in their names. A bu-kow is “any thing frightful, as a scarecrow, applied also to a hobgoblin,” according to the Scottish National Dictionary. The word bogey has also been “used to frighten children.” An 1898 poem describes one of these “boo-man”:
Kings, counsellors, and princes fair,
As weel’s the common ploughman,
Hae maist their pleasures mix’d wi’ care,
An’ dread some muckle boo-man.
Going back even further is the 1565 story “Smyth Whych that Forged Hym a New Dame,” which describes a blacksmith attempting to hammer a woman into a younger version of herself. The blacksmith says, “Speke now, let me se / and say ones bo!”
A Boo-tiful History
The phrase “boo” even sounds a bit alarming. It is a single syllable, so it is easy to say quickly, and some linguists believe the “ooh” sound can be pronounced louder than other vowel sounds, such as “ee.”
People from other countries use other words, such as “uuh” in Spain (which sounds like “ooh” in English) and “hou” in France. However, “boo” is also recognizable in most European countries, albeit it is spelled differently, such as “¡bú!” in Spanish.
Boo also has other meanings — people hiss and “boo” to show discontent at sporting events and other activities. Some people also refer to a boyfriend or girlfriend as their “boo,” which may come from the French word “beau.” However neither of these usages appear to be related to the ghostly word “boo.”
By Noelle Talmon, contributor for Ripleys.com