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Is "bugly" (from 'butt ugly') used in British English? And if it is, is it more common in some regional dialects than others?

Heartspring
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Swenglish
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    Well, I've never encountered it before. – Colin Fine Nov 11 '23 at 16:42
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    I have never heard or read "bugly" in BE. I have both heard and read "fugly" -> fucking ugly. – Greybeard Nov 11 '23 at 16:55
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    I haven't heard it in American English, but maybe I'm just out of the loop. – alphabet Nov 11 '23 at 18:10
  • I may live a sheltered existence, but I have not come across this slang, or Greybeard's alternative variant, although this second is to be found in the Cambridge English Dictionary, which, however, refrains from offering an etymology. Do you have any idea about why this type of shortening should be used. it seems to me that a person wishing to be as graphically offensive as to describe someone as 'bug ugly' would keep the full unshortened insult. – Tuffy Nov 11 '23 at 21:37
  • @Greybeard My experience matches yours. A similar one here recently that I had not seen before is fidiotic so it seems to be productive. – Henry Nov 12 '23 at 00:29
  • @Henry - I've also recently come across 'ftupid' a couple of times - which neatly avoids trying to pronounce 'fs'. – Tetsujin Nov 12 '23 at 11:40
  • I don't think "butt" is used commonly in BrE -- they say "fanny" or "arse". That makes a shortening of "butt ugly" less likely. – Barmar Nov 13 '23 at 16:04
  • It's not a dialect word, it seems to be an import from the US, although it's used in compounds such as "butt lift" (a surgical procedure). That said, it's unlikely that its use is precisely uniform across the UK, so there are bound to be areas where it is more and less common. – Stuart F Dec 11 '23 at 20:05
  • @Barmar nobody in the UK would ever use "fanny" to mean "butt" for obvious reasons. – Turkeyphant Jan 24 '24 at 23:31

2 Answers2

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No. ‘Bugly’ is a portmanteau of ‘butt ugly’, and ‘butt’ is not a common term for buttocks in British English, consistent with my never having heard of it. Of course it may be a 21st century neologism, but the reference to regionalism in the question would suggest that is not what the OP intended.

David
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  • This is interesting, but can you comment on the question about the word 'bugly'? – Mitch Jan 25 '24 at 15:12
  • @Mitch — I don’t follow you. I said I had never heard it ( in Britain understood). If you are implying that I shouldn’t answer solely on the basis is personal experience, I would agree, but I provided a rational for my experience. Think pigs flying, justified by knowledge of biology. – David Jan 25 '24 at 19:28
  • David, I was just asking for clarity. You mentioned that 'butt' is not used in BrE, but it does not follow that a portmanteau using it is then also not used. (and also there is no data beyond 'it seems so' to support that 'bugly is indeed a portmanteau. – Mitch Jan 25 '24 at 20:02
  • Actually someone edited my answer to insert the word “portmanteau” which I have never encountered in this usage. I suppose I could run an ngram on British v US usage, although it’s not a bookish word. – David Jan 25 '24 at 22:57
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It's a portmanteau, following the trend of 'fugly' [f*cking ugly].

A portmanteau is essentially a combination of two [or more] existing words to form a new word, whilst retaining the joint meaning of the donor words.

As soon as someone makes up a brand new portmanteau, it opens the flood gates to similar ones*.
Any new development can seem common in the social circle that uses it. It needs to survive several years of 'popularity contest' before the world at large will have it in their immediate vocabulary, though one that simply swaps an 'f' for a 'b' will always be relativey easy to work out, the first time you hear it.

Sexual portmanteau are, let's say, not uncommon. No, I'm not listing them here.

Grammarly has a list of fairly recent… clean ones - https://www.grammarly.com/blog/portmanteaus/

*Though the original portmanteau was way back in the early 70s, there have been an increasing number of [current news]-gates in recent years. That one really took off, to the point of nausea.
There was a period of joining the first syllable of someone's first and last names - I think Jaylo or J.Lo [Jennifer Lopez] may have been the first. Bojo [Boris Johnson] was the last I heard. I think we may have at last seen the end of that trend.

Tetsujin
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