Word Perfect: Etymological Entertainment For Every Day of the Year by Susie Dent

Author:Susie Dent [Dent, Susie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hodder and Stoughton
Published: 2020-09-14T23:00:00+00:00

22 June

BOGUS

On 22 June 1986, Diego Maradona created one of the most controversial events in the history of the World Cup. A clear handball resulted in a goal for Argentina against England during the quarter-final match at the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City. Argentina went on to win both the quarter-final and the whole tournament. After the match, Maradona stated that the goal was scored ‘a little with my head, and a little with the Hand of God’. In other words, and as England fans have never forgotten, his goal was entirely bogus.

The earliest evidence we have for the word ‘bogus’ is in reference to a machine for making counterfeit coins. In 1827, an Ohio newspaper related the discovery of such a device in the hands of a gang of coiners in Painesville, Ohio. The newspaper reports that it was a mysterious-looking object, which someone in the crowd called a ‘bogus’. The term was then adopted by the Painesville Telegraph and reprinted in many of its next editions.

Many stories have been created to account for the origin of the word, most of which are probably bogus themselves. It may have been inspired by a dialect word from Vermont, where a ‘tantrabogus’ was once the equivalent of today’s ‘thingamajig’, applied to any strange-looking object. That word may have been brought over by early colonists hailing from Devon, where local dialect included ‘tantarrob’, a nickname for the Devil. Who is also of course the bogey in ‘bogeyman’, which leads us right back to Maradona.

If this story is correct, then ‘bogus’ is a sibling of an appellation for the Devil. For most England fans, even today, the ‘Hand of the Devil’ goal would seem far more appropriate.

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