Page:Farmer - Slang and its analogues past and present - Volume 1.pdf/289

 Bog-Oranges, subs. (popular).—Potatoes. The phrase is an allusion to the vegetable in question forming a very substantial food staple of the Irish peasantry, with whom, in the popular mind, potatoes are largely associated. Hence probably the nickname. Cf., Murphy. [Oranges, from the shape, + bog = Irish, Bog-land being a humorous nickname for the Emerald Isle.]

Bog-trotter, subs. (familiar).—A satirical name for an Irishman. Camden, however [c. 1605], speaking of the 'debateable land' on the borders of England and Scotland, says, 'both these dales breed notable bog-trotters.' From this the original sense would appear to have been one accustomed to walk across bogs. As a nickname for an Irishman, it dates at least from 1671.

1671. R. Head, English Rogue, pt. I., ch. xxvii. (Repr. 1874), p. 232. [Irishmen are spoken of as bog-trotters in this work.]

1859. Sala, Gaslight and Daylight, ch. xxix. Gaunt reapers and bog-trotters in those traditional blue body-coats, leathern smalls, and bell-crowned hats, that seem to be manufactured nowhere save in Ireland.

Bog-trotting, adj. (familiar).—A contemptuous epithet applied to one living among bogs; e.g., a bog-trotting Irishman.

1758-65. Goldsmith, On Quack Doctors (Essays and Poems, 1836), p. 127. Rock advises the world to beware of bog-trotting quacks.

1849. Thackeray, Pendennis, I., p. 169. The impudent, bog-trotting scamp dare not threaten me!

1876. C. Hindley, Adventures of a Cheap Jack, p. 191. 'What do you mean by calling me Irish? it is you that are Irish, you .' 'Ha! ha! ha! ha!' jerked out Fagan. 'There, I tould you so. He can't stand to be called by his true name; the bog-trotting rascal denies his Ould Ireland for a mother.'

Bogus, adj. (American, now common).—Spurious: fictitious; a term applied to anything sham, or to that which is not what it professes to be. Various accounts, some of them of a circumstantial character, are given as to the genesis of this word. One thing only seems certain; and that is its American origin. The generally received derivation, hitherto, has been that given by the Boston Courier (12 June, 1857) to the effect that the word is a vile corruption of the Italian name Borghese, a notorious swindler, who about the year 1837 literally flooded the Western and South-western States with fictitious cheques, notes, and bills of exchange and similar securities to an enormous amount. It is said that the name was gradually corrupted first to borges and then to bogus, and the man Borghese being associated in the popular mind with doubtful money transactions, his name so corrupted into bogus became applied to fraudulent papers and practices, and latterly to any spurious or counterfeit object, as bogus money, hair, diamonds, accusations, etc. Yet another suggestion is one put forward by Mr. Jas. Russell Lowell. He thinks it has descended in a corrupted form from the French Bagasse, the refuse of the sugar cane after the juice has been expressed. This worthless product has, it is suggested, given the name to other worthless things having travelled from Louisiana up the Mississippi,