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Posted By: Father Steve Bub - 09/06/05 02:56 AM
In another thread, Jackie referred to Ullrich as "bub." What could she mean by that?

Might it be a shortened familiar form of Beelzebub?

A derivative of the Yiddish bube -- meaning sweetie, darling.

A shortening of the Southern American bubba -- meaning a good old boy.

A use of the 19th Century British bub for a male pal.

... or something else?


Posted By: belligerentyouth Re: Bub - 09/06/05 09:46 AM
'Der Bub' is the word for boy for millions in Austria, Switzerland and Southern Germany. Losing popularity though to the standard 'Junge' amongst younger generations.

http://makeashorterlink.com/?H2D222EBB

Posted By: Faldage Re: Bub - 09/06/05 09:55 AM
A shortening of the Southern American bubba -- meaning a good old boy.

AHD says "probably an alteration of brother." It goes on to say that "bubba" is "an alteration of bub." Times I've heard it used it's in phrases, like Jackie's, that are a little admonishing.

Posted By: consuelo Re: Bub - 09/06/05 10:07 AM
If Jackie was being a lot admonishing, she might have said "Buster".

Posted By: TEd Remington Re: Bub - 09/06/05 11:13 AM
Bub is short for bubba, as someone noted above. Buyt you also need to know that bubba arises (apparently) from brother. A southernism, certainly, and is actually a given name at times!

Reminds me of the newly-minted teacher at the one-room elementary school who was taking roll on her first day. "And what's your name, little girl?" she asked.

"Bitchy McCoy," responded the little girl.

"That may be your nickname, dear, but what is your real name?" The little girl insisted repeatedly that her name was Bitchy.

The teacher finally exploded. "I will not have any nasty nicknames used in MY classroom," she shouted. "I want you to go home until you learn respect."

The little girl turned to the little boy beside her. "C'mon, Rat-face, let's go home, she ain't gonna believe you neither."

Posted By: of troy Re: Bub - 09/06/05 11:29 AM
Bub though, isn't just a southern expression..

Bubba (as term for a guy) is rarely heard in NY (and almost never by NYer's) but BUB is..

a cop might day "Get a move on it, bub" to someone loitering.

(bubba is term for a grandmother, or for grandmother. )

Posted By: Father Steve Re: Bub - 09/06/05 12:59 PM
The Yiddish is literally "little grandmother" but the use broadened over time to include males.

Posted By: musick In the Moody - 09/06/05 01:06 PM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_Fennelly

Posted By: Marianna Re: Bub - 09/06/05 01:11 PM
I'll admit that I love that admonishing use of "Buster", you know... "Watch it, Buster!"... gotta love it

But where did it come from? Anyone know? Should I LIU?

Posted By: zmjezhd Re: Bub - 09/06/05 01:23 PM
Yiddish באבע (bobe) 'grandmother; old woman; midwife' is no doubt related to Russian баба (baba) which accented on the penultimate means 'old woman' and accented on the ultimate means 'grandfather; old man'. (We have a loanword, babushka (fr. Russian бабушка) 'old lady's head-scarf' which is related.) In the mix, may be German Bube 'boy, male child', which may be related to English boy and baby.

Posted By: AnnaStrophic Re: Bub - 09/06/05 01:45 PM
Maybe some folks are getting it mixed up with bubeleh?

Posted By: Sparteye Re: Bub - 09/06/05 01:53 PM
Bub is ... <a> southernism, certainly, and is actually a given name at times!

I had an Uncle Bub, from northern Indiana.

Posted By: zmjezhd Re: Bub - 09/06/05 02:03 PM
Yiddish bobele would be the diminutive of bobe, i.e., 'little old lady'. I believe, in Yiddish, it is only applied to women as an endearment, but perhaps got extended in its English exile. Looking around in Weinreich's, I see also: bobe 'hag' (different entry from bobe 'grandmother; old woman'), bobe-mayse באבע-מעשה 'fairytale', bobetse 'hag', bobeshi 'granny'.

Posted By: belligerentyouth Re: Bub - 09/06/05 04:43 PM
> In the mix, may be German Bube 'boy, male child', which may be related to English boy and baby.

'Bub' is the word for boy. A 'Bube' is (now) only used for a jack/knave in cards.

Posted By: belligerentyouth Re: Bub - 09/06/05 04:54 PM
> it is only applied to women as an endearment

Could it be that a lot of such familial and familiar terms of endearment have a p/b consonant in or at the front of them? ..bub, bud, pal, pop, pard, buddy, bro, pa... So is bub part of a word cluster? Isn't the b/p sound one of the first the be pronounced by children? Maybe there's some relevance.

Posted By: zmjezhd Re: Bub - 09/06/05 05:06 PM
Could it be that a lot of such familial and familiar terms of endearment have a p/b consonant in or at the front of them?

Some folks hypothesize so, and some don't. Ones that don't: dad, Russian tata, Yiddish zeyde, Italian nono, German Vati.

Posted By: Father Steve Re: Bub - 09/06/05 07:03 PM
NO FAIR (!) that zmjezhd knows how to make Hebrew characters appear on the Board.


Posted By: johnjohn Re: Bub - 09/06/05 09:41 PM
bub = Oz slang contraction for baby, whichever gender

Posted By: Father Steve Re: Bub - 09/06/05 10:33 PM
Doctor Bill suggests it might be an infantile (e.g. sibling) mispronunciation of "brother."

Posted By: Jackie Re: Bub - 09/06/05 11:03 PM
Hey, johnjohn--good to see you!

If Jackie was being a lot admonishing, she might have said "Buster". You got that right, Dudette!

I've used Bub all my life, 90-some-odd percent of the time as pure teasing. All I can suggest is try and go by context, which if it isn't clear here, please ask me--though usually I try to put unmistakable indicators when I'm being serious.

Posted By: zmjezhd Re: Bub - 09/07/05 01:04 AM
Hebrew characters

Actually Yiddish characters, but they look real close to the Hebrew ones, though.

Posted By: Faldage Re: Bub - 09/07/05 01:12 AM
zmjezhd knows how to make Hebrew characters appear on the Board

No, he doesn't. He knows how to make little rectangles appear on the Board.

Posted By: Buffalo Shrdlu Re: Bub - 09/07/05 01:19 AM
> rectangles

I'm with you Jackie. ain't you got no Yidbrew font on your machine, Fald?

Posted By: wofahulicodoc bubbling over wih glee - 09/07/05 02:11 AM
The Yiddish is literally "little grandmother" but the use broadened over time to include males.

The diminutive suffix -ele would be added to make her a little grandmother, i.e. "bubbele."
(That's BUB-schwah-luh, U as in put rather than putt.) Yes, yes, both of them :-) ) The diminutive can be used as a dismissive, somewhat belittling put-down, though paradoxically it also can carry overtones of affection.

Bubbe does mean grandmother, and by extension any older woman, sometimes implying a meddling old woman. It's also the source of a delightful bilingual pun, exploiting the word "Meisse" meaning story, plural "Meissen,' pronounced MICE-en. "Bubbemeissen" are old wives' tales, but if you like you may equally refer to "bubbamycin," the fanciful antibiotic in chicken soup...

Addendum: Sorry, zmjezhd, at least it's only half a mantle... (weak-excuse-for-an-apology-e)



Posted By: inselpeter Re: Bub - 09/07/05 04:05 AM
>> Actually Yiddish characters, but they look real close to the Hebrew ones, though.<<

?


Posted By: Faldage Re: Bub - 09/07/05 10:18 AM
ain't you got no Yidbrew font on your machine, Fald?

Naw, I jus oney gots a Mac. But at least our dragon can do little rectangles in three languages.

Posted By: zmjezhd Re: Bub - 09/07/05 02:18 PM
No, he doesn't. He knows how to make little rectangles appear on the Board.

If you look to the right of the little boxes, you'll the transliterated word (using the approved YIVO romanization scheme).

Posted By: zmjezhd Re: making the world safe for Unicode - 09/07/05 02:25 PM
Naw, I jus oney gots a Mac. But at least our dragon can do little rectangles in three languages.

Funny, works out A-OK on my Mac. In both Safari and Mozilla. (I don't have IE installed, so I can't test that.)

Posted By: zmjezhd Re: Bub - 09/07/05 02:27 PM
?

It was a joke, I say, it was a joke, son. Yiddish uses, for the most part, letters from the Hebrew alphabet, though it has modified some of them and added some ligatures.

Posted By: tsuwm special characters? - 09/07/05 03:21 PM
works out A-OK on my Mac. In both Safari and Mozilla. (I don't have IE installed, so I can't test that.)

I see your Greek/Cyrillic/Hebrew characters just fine on both IE and firefox browsers. The problem I seem to have is in copying such characters from some other sites and then pasting them into AWAD's editor -- then I get little rectangles.

for example:
[I can't come up with an example right now; I suppose it is a combination of browser/computer dependency]

here's an example which copies somewhat bizarrely, but note what happened to the expression "'byzantinisation' of σ[sigma] into C".

παρελθοντολαγνεία

I give a similar intrerpretation to the 'byzantinisation' of σ into ϲ


then there is the strange way that OED etymologies copy:
{kappa}{omicron}{rho}{omega}{nu}{giacu}{fsigma}
but I suppose this is an improvement on the ϲs I used to get.

hmmm, the same block of Greek letters comes across as nothing via IE.

There is no straighforward way to get Greek characters in HTML.

Posted By: zmjezhd Re: special characters? - 09/07/05 03:29 PM
There is no straighforward way to get Greek characters in HTML.

The Perseus Project uses the Beta codes ASCII transcription scheme and converts on the fly between that and Unicode / polytonal glyphs. It's old and ugly but it's probly the safest way to represent Greek in a 7-bit safe way optimally.

http://www.cs.utk.edu/~mclennan/BA/OM/Beta-codes.html

The cut/copy and paste problem might have to do with what encoding your browser is set up with. (Just a guess.)

Posted By: TEd Remington Re: Bub - 09/07/05 03:59 PM
>It was a joke, I say, it was a joke, son. Yiddish uses, for the most part, letters from the Hebrew alphabet, though it has modified some of them and added some ligatures.

So it was really a choke?

Posted By: zmjezhd Re: Bub - 09/07/05 04:16 PM
So it was really a choke?

'Twas a Jerusalem artichoke methinks.

Posted By: inselpeter Re: Bub - 09/07/05 07:56 PM
"son"?

Posted By: tsuwm Re: Bub - 09/07/05 08:05 PM
>>It was a joke, I say, it was a joke, son.

this is an obvious reference to Foghorn Leghorn.
http://www.barbneal.com/foghorn.asp (hear fogleg21.wav, e.g.)
-ron o.

Posted By: zmjezhd Re: Bub - 09/07/05 08:46 PM
"son"?

Sorry, if I got your gender incorrect, but yours seems a masculine name. The allusion doesn't work as well with daughter. Either way, we aren't related as far as i know. Please accept my appy poly loggies.

Posted By: inselpeter Re: Bub - 09/07/05 09:58 PM
>>if I got your gender<<

No, though I gather it was once the subject of some speculation aboard -- rather, I was questioning the possible implications of a relative diminutive; although it seems from your answer, there were none.

Posted By: Jackie Re: Bub - 09/08/05 01:02 AM
Oh my gosh, did Foghorn Leghorn really say these?
No what, I say what's the big idea of bashin' me on the noggin with a rollin' pin. Clunk enough people and we'll have a nation of lumpheads.

and
She re, I say she reminds me of Paul Revere's ride. A little light in the belfry.

These are hilarious! No wonder my husband has always liked him. Thanks for po, I say thanks for posting that, tsuwm; I've bookmarked it for when he gets back into town.

Posted By: ullrich Re: Bub - 09/09/05 10:41 PM
"Bub" ?

Sanctimonious, a little. Condescending, very. But admonishing?

Posted By: belMarduk Re: Bub - 09/10/05 12:01 AM
I've never used Bub in an admonishing manner. I always thought it was a little bit jokey for that. For example, say Hubby is twiddling on the computer and we're supposed to be going to a movie then I'd could conceivably say, "all right Bub, are you coming or am I going without you."

I find Buster to be admonishing.

Posted By: inselpeter Re: Bub - 09/10/05 12:27 AM
>>Buster<<

dic.com gives no ety. But I think Buster Keaton did claim that his father made it up.

Posted By: ullrich Re: Bub - 09/10/05 11:16 AM
Agree with belMarduk.

"I hereby sentence you to death by firing squad, Bub" ?

No.

"Buster" is far more suitable.

Posted By: inselpeter Re: Bub - 09/10/05 11:39 AM
Except for the proprietor of a local diner who calls absolutely everyone 'bub' -- from the meanest looking unshaven slob, to the most gorgeous fashion plate in a spandex skirt -- I have never heard anyone use the word who wasn't playing him on TV. The truth of New York is in this respect less grim than the rumor, and you are far more likely to have a Sikh drive you to Madison Garden when you wanted the Square than to find a potato knish behind the wheel. Speaking of which, and on another subject entirely, why oh why is the truth -- famously stranger far than fiction -- in truth so often only just what you'd expect?

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