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I think they know that, and were riffing off the misspelling ;-) It's about an 800 year old word in French. Wiktionary claims that it was imported to US Englis
by khedoros1 9y ago
I think they know that, and were riffing off the misspelling ;-)
It's about an 800 year old word in French. Wiktionary claims that it was imported to US English primarily by GIs returning from the Vietnam War. I'd assume that it would come more directly from French, in other forms of English.
- code_duck 9y agoI recall this being brought up by a guy who had been a helicopter mechanic in the Army... he believed it was a Vietnamese word spelled ‘buku’, and it took me some time to realize he meant beaucoup. Example in context: “They’re making buku bucks over there.”
- khedoros1 9y agoMy father was in the Marine Corps; about a decade too young for Vietnam, but I kind of assume he picked it up from Marines who'd been in the service at the appropriate time. From my perspective, for a long time it was just another one of those weird-sounding words that only Dad used (which turned out to be French, German, and Spanish).