boogalee

English

Etymology

Probably related to bougie and/or boogaloo.

Noun

boogalee (plural boogalees)

1. (sometimes derogatory) A Cajun (with the implication that the person has partially black as well as partially white ancestry).
   • 1947, Robert Tallant, Mrs. Candy and Saturday night:

     "That boogalee's been talking," he said, arranging his pillows higher. "I know he saw me this morning." "He did." "Snoopy," said Donald. "Mr. Petit ain't a boogalee," said Mrs. Candy. "And he ain't snoopy. He's right. What my roomers does is  […] "

   • 1960, The Twainian:

     Avis Trosclair was a boogalee, a Cajun from the deepest bayous of Louisiana, a man of vast inner resources of happiness. About 42 years old, he talked with a perpetual love of humorous conversation, with a Cajun accent.

   • 2011, Myron Tassin, We Are Acadians #2: Nous Sommes Acadiens, Pelican Publishing Company, Inc., →ISBN, page 18:

     We were considered pleasant to be around in spite of—or perhaps because of—a supposed utter lack of ambition. We were routinely called “boogalees” behind our backs and “coon-asses” to our faces. But times were changing, […]

   • 2011, Walker Percy, The Moviegoer: A Novel, Open Road Media, →ISBN:

     After the war some of us bought a houseboat on Vermilion Bay near Tigre au Chenier. Walter got everything organized. It was just like him to locate a cook-caretaker living right out there in the swamp and to line up some real boogalee guides.

   • 2017, Woody Falgoux, Rise of the Cajun Mariners: The Race for Big Oil, Skyhorse, →ISBN:

     To Bobby's schoolmates there, he was more than a non-English speaker, he was a Boogalee, a New Orleanian's derogatory term for a Cadien, or Cajun. The city boys teased Bobby about his hand-me-down coveralls […]

Alternative forms

• boogerlee

Further reading

• 2002, Jacques M. Henry, Carl Leon Bankston, Blue Collar Bayou: Louisiana Cajuns in the New Economy of Ethnicity, Praeger Publishers, →ISBN:

  Also spelled boogalee and bougalee, it referred to a French person of mixed black and white ancestry; "a contemptuous or taunting name for a lower-class Cajun,"45 it was considered a synonym of Cajun and coonass.