Origin and history of boo-boo

"blunder," 1943, apparently first in stage jargon, perhaps from the baseball slang meaning "a fly ball in a high arc missed by the fielder" (1937) or else from the earlier meaning "radio receiver that interferes with nearby sets" when a careless operator throws it into oscillatio

A song title, "That Syncopated Boogie-boo," appears in a copyright listing from 1912....

When a "boy" gets in this "offish" state the prisoners call him "buggy" he becomes a bug-a-boo, and to keep him safe so that...

"light, feathery stuff," 1790, apparently a variant of floow "wooly substance, down, nap" (1580s), perhaps from Flemish vluwe, from French velu "shaggy, hairy," from Latin vellus "fleece," or Latin villus "tuft of hair" (see velvet). OED suggests fluff as "an imitative modificati

1800, "animal that howls," originally in reference to the South American monkey, agent noun from howl (v.). Meaning "glaring blunder, ridiculous mistake" is first recorded 1890. In early telephony (1886 - c. 1920) the name of a device used by the exchange to produce a loud howl i

mid-14c., "public entertainment, specially prepared or arranged display," from Old French spectacle "sight, spectacle, Roman games" (13c.), from Latin spectaculum "a public show, spectacle, place from which shows are seen," from spectare "to view, watch, behold," frequentative fo

c. 1300, stomblen, "to trip or miss one's footing" (physically or morally), probably from Old Norse (compare dialectal Norwegian stumla, Swedish stambla "to stumble"), and probably from a variant of Proto-Germanic *stam-, source of Old English stamerian "to stammer," German stumm

mid-15c., "handle clumsily," possibly from Old Norse falma "to fumble, grope." Similar words in Scandinavian and North Sea Germanic (Swedish fumla; Dutch fommelen) suggest onomatopoeia from a sound felt to indicate clumsiness (compare bumble, stumble, and obsolete English famble,

late 14c., "tread or step lightly and nimbly, skip, dance, caper," from Old French triper "jump around, dance around, strike with the feet" (12c.), from a Germanic source (compare Middle Dutch trippen "to skip, trip, hop; to stamp, trample," Low German trippeln, Frisian tripje, D

also, through 18c., errour; c. 1300, "a deviation from truth made through ignorance or inadvertence, a mistake," also "offense against morality or justice; transgression, wrong-doing, sin;" from Old French error "mistake, flaw, defect, heresy," from Latin errorem (nominative erro