There are many synonyms currently exist for “breasts”. So where did the word “boobs” come from?
There’s an old joke that posits that the word “Boob” came about because it serves as a visual representation of what a pair of breasts look like from three key viewing angles, above (B), the front (oo) and the side (b) respectively. Unsurprisingly, this is just a happy accident, rather than a serious origin story.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary the earliest written example of the word “boob” being used to specifically describe breasts comes from the 1934 novel, Tropic of Cancer: “She was lying on the divan with her boobies in her hands.”
The author of that masterpiece, Henry Miller, is also often credited for the first recorded use of the slight modification, “boobs”. This occurred in another product of his literary genius, published in 1949, called Sexus in which he states,
"I felt her sloshy boobs joggling me but I was too intent on pursuing the ramifications of Coleridge’s amazing mind to let her vegetable appendages disturb me…"
However, upon a much more comprehensive review than just consulting the normally impeccably accurate Oxford English Dictionary, earlier example of the word “boob” used in this way in the lesser known 1932 novel Young Lonigan, by James T. Farrell. In that work, you will find the line:
"Studs didn’t usually pay attention to how girls looked, except to notice the shape of their legs, because if they had good legs they were supposed to be good for you-know, and if they didn’t they weren’t; and to notice their boobs, if they were big enough to bounce."
Needless to say, whether Miller, who was well known for his works of erotic, breast-centric fiction, wrote his “boobies” line before 1932 or not, it’s generally thought he did not coin this term for breasts, nor likely did Farrell.
The first words children inevitably vocalise will often use consonants like P, B, D, and M in a repetitive fashion, creating formerly nonsensical words like “papa”, “dada”, “mama”, and, most relevant to the topic at hand, “buh-buh”. Thus, if “bubby” didn’t just derive from the German for “teat”, it’s generally thought it came from these vocalisations.
It has also been widely speculated that perhaps “bubby” was only partially from baby vocalisations, and in fact was just a child-speak variation of the Latin for “little girl”, “pūpa”, the feminine gender of “pūpus” (little boy), which itself may be a word that has its origins in baby-talk. However, we couldn’t find any documented connection between “pūpa” and “boob” other than a whole lot of sources claiming this without providing even the smallest amount of evidence to support the claim. So until such evidence presents itself, we’re going to remain skeptical on this one.
In any event, the first reference to “bubby” or the plural “bubbies” being used to describe breast appeared in a 1686 poem in New Poems by Thomas D’urfey:
"The Ladies here may without Scandal shew / Face or white Bubbies, to each ogling Beau."
The next known instance appeared in one of John Arbuthnot’s John Bull pamphlets written in 1712, where it states:
"One of the things, that first alarmed me, was, that they showed a spite against my poor old mother *. “Lord,” quoth I, “what makes you so jealous of a poor, old, innocent gentlewoman, that minds only her prayers, and her Practice of Piety: she never meddles in any of your concerns?” “Foh,” say they, “to see a handsome, brisk, genteel, young fellow, so much governered by a doating old woman! Why don’t you go and suck the bubby?"
Thirteen years later in Richard Bradley’s Family Dictionary (vol. ii), it gives a method for helping women express milk, “But if on the contrary a Woman has no occasion for Milk, there are more Ways than one to make her lose it. First, Let her put Chervil upon her Bubbies and under her Arm-pits…”
While the OED states that this term soon became obsolete, in fact, there are numerous instances of it being used since then, even up to the present day, with it thought that this ultimately gave rise to the word “boobies” and its many variants around the 1920s.
Moving swiftly on, in regards to why “boobs” seems to be the most popular synonym for breasts, it has been speculated that it may have something to do with the fact that, for whatever reason, most people don’t seem to find the word offensive, unlike many other synonyms for breasts that tend to draw a little more ire like “tities”, “chesticles”, “God’s milk jugs”, or “fun bags”. In fact, in 2013, Bonds, an Australian women’s clothing chain did a survey and found that 74% of Australian women typically used the word “boobs” to refer to their own breasts. As such, the company went ahead and decided to use the word in their “Bonds for Boobs” ad campaign, which both advertised their bra product line as well as a partnership they’d made with the National Breast Cancer Foundation.
Now that was WAY more educational and enjoyable than was expected.
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