Boogy

Part of speech: verb, noun

Definitions

1. A lively style of rhythmic dance music derived from blues and jazz ; to move energetically in time with that kind of music
2. A fast, syncopated popular music style rooted in blues and boogie-woogie ; to dance vigorously to such a beat
3. Upbeat dance music with a driving bass line and rhythm ; to shake and sway freely while dancing to it

Etymology: "Boogy" is a slang term for a Black person, and its earliest recorded use appears in Ralph Ellison's 1947 novel "Invisible Man," where a character says a match should be struck because the "boogy's nuts." The word's roots are tangled with the wider "boogy" family of terms, and the same spelling also turns up in jazz and dance contexts, where it names a style of music. A 1950 radio broadcast describes "be-bop" as a new word for "boogy or jazz," which shows how the term once sat alongside music vocabulary before its use as a slur took hold. Its relation to "bogey" is a matter of spelling. Under that alternative form, "bogey" traces back to a Middle English word for a frightening spectre, possibly connected to a Germanic root meaning "swollen up, thick," and it is the same family that gives English "bug" and the golf term for a score of one over par. The golf sense comes from an imagined devil who plays the course, and the association with a bandit was popularized by the 1986 film "Top Gun."