Boogie

How to spell boogie

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce boogie

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does boogie mean?

1. verbTo dance energetically and informally to pop, rock, or disco music.
2. nounA spell of informal, energetic dancing, or the lively blues-based music style associated with it.

Boogie in a sentence

• verb

  After dinner the guests began to boogie to the old disco records.

• noun

  They headed to the club for a late-night boogie after the show.

• verb

  She loves to boogie whenever a funk track comes on the radio.

• noun

  The pianist closed the set with a fast, rolling boogie in the old blues tradition.

Where does boogie come from?

Language of origin: Other

Boogie entered American English in the early twentieth century, and its earliest traces are genuinely murky, which is why its origin is best described as uncertain. It first appears in the term 'boogie-woogie', a style of fast, repetitive-bass blues piano that took hold in African American communities in the 1920s and 1930s. Some scholars connect it to West African words for drumming or dancing, while others link it to earlier slang in which 'boogie' referred to a rowdy party or, in some uses, was a derogatory term; the dance and music sense gradually became the dominant one. By the 1960s and 1970s, with the rise of disco and funk, 'boogie' had broadened into a casual verb meaning simply to dance energetically to pop or rock music. The doubled 'o' followed by the soft 'g' and the '-ie' ending make the spelling feel slippery, and because the origin is undocumented, etymologists treat the trail with caution.

How the word is built

• boogie (of uncertain origin, possibly from boogie-woogie)
• -ie (informal noun/verb ending)