Unnumbered source etymology
Original entry ↗A liquor made of rum and molasses. · Counterfeit money.
Counterfeit or fake; not genuine. · Undesirable or harmful. · Incorrect, useless, or broken. · Of a totally fictitious issue printed for collectors, often issued on behalf of a non-existent territory or country (not to be confused with forgery, which is an illegitimate copy of a genuine stamp).
First attested as an underworld term for an apparatus for creating counterfeit coins, then the coins themselves. Later, the word was applied to anything of poor quality. The newest use to mean useless is probably from the slang of computer hackers. The origin is unknown, but there are at least two theories that try to trace its origin: * From Hausa boko (“to fake”). Since bogus first appeared in the United States, it may be possible that its ancestor was brought there on a slave ship. * From criminal slang as a short form of tantrabogus, a 19th-century slang term for a menacing object, making some believe that bogus might be linked to bogy or bogey (see bogeyman). In this sense, Bogus might be related to Bogle – a traditional trickster from the Scottish Borders, noted for achieving acts of household trickery; confusing, but not usually damaging.
Relationships mentioned by the source
These are extracted mentions, not a timeline or a verified sequence of immediate parents.
- Derivation mentionbokoha
This page abbreviates 1 auxiliary source items. The etymology narrative is not shortened. Omission counts are available in the audit fields below; consult the original for complete auxiliary material.
Inspect preserved source fields
Raw extraction fields are retained for auditing. Their order does not establish ancestry.
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