Booger
A booger is a slang term for hardened mucus from the nose. Boogers form when the mucus traps dust and other particles in the air. Mucus dries around the particle and, much like a pearl forming in an oyster, hardens into a booger. Since catching foreign particles is one of the main functions of nasal mucus, the presence of boogers is a good indicator of a properly functioning nose (as opposed to a "runny nose," which indicates illness). See also Nose-picking.
The crusty material that forms in the eyes during sleep is sometimes comically referred to as "eye boogers."
The Word Booger
Booger is a word that has scholars baffled as to its etymology. Since it has always been considered semi-vulgar or at least childish, it has been used in few written sources. Furthermore, in the past the word booger has been used to mean many things, and has often overlapped with the terms boogie, bogey, and bugger. The earliest usage of the word is as an alternate spelling of the vulgarism bugger. Booger was first said to be slang for "dried mucus" in the 1892 Dialect Notes; boogie was said to mean the same thing in the 1891 Dictionary of American Regional English. Its appearance in slang dictionaries indicates that it had probably been use for some time in the United States before the 1890s. Both books said that mainly "schoolchildren" used the words.
By the middle of the twentieth century, both booger and boogie were commonly being used to mean dried mucus. As late as the 1970s, both words seem to have been (relatively) acceptable. Since then, however, booger has apparently become more common. This may be due to its appearance in legitimate print media: Bill Watterson claims to be the first cartoonist to use the word booger in a syndicated comic strip, while Dave Barry has pioneered its use in newspaper columns, both in the 1980s. Today "booger" is the more generally used term, illustrated by the observation that when the film Boogie Nights was released in 1997, no one thought it was about dried mucus.
Booger-related humor
- Q: What's the difference between boogers and broccoli?
- A: Kids won't eat broccoli!
Cultural references
- Weird Al Yankovic has a song titled Gotta Boogie, in which he sings about the difficulty of removing a booger from his finger.
- Booger is also the name of a character from the movie Revenge of the Nerds and its various sequels.
