Cover for the 2018 song Booty by Spanish rapper C. Tangana (Antón Álvarez Alfaro) and Mexican-American singer Becky G. (Rebbeca Marie Gomez)
29 May 2024
Booty is actually two different words, one meaning plunder or loot and the other referring to sex.
Booty, referring to plunder or loot, of is uncertain origin. It was borrowed from some European language, but there are any number of potential candidates. It’s cognate with the modern German Beute, the Dutch buit, and the French butin. The original Germanic root probably meant to exchange, barter, distribute, ala the Old Norse noun býti and verb býta.
We see the word in William Caxton’s 1474 The Game and Playe of the Chesse:
And for so moche hit behoueth to see well to that whan the tyme of the bataylle cometh that he borowe not ne make no tayllage For noman may be ryche that leuyth his owne hopying to gete and take of other Than all waye her gayn and wynnynge ought to be comyn amonge them exept theyr Armes. For in lyke wyse as the victorie is comune so should the dispoyll and botye be comune vnto them And therfore Dauid that gentyll knyght in the fyrst book of kynges in the last chapitre made a lawe that he that abode behynde by maladye or sekenes in the tentes should haue as moche part of the butyn as he that had be in the bataylle.
(And for so much it behooves to see well that when the time of battle comes that he does not borrow nor make tallage. For no one may be rich that leaves his own hoping to get and take from others. Then in all ways their gain and winnings ought to be common among them, except their arms. For likewise, as the victory is common so should the despoil and booty be common unto them. And therefore David, that gentle knight, in the first book of Kings in the last chapter made a law that he who remained behind in the tents because of malady or sickness should have as much part of the booty as he that had been in the battle.)
Note that Caxton’s version has both the Germanic botye and the French butyn.
Booty can also mean the buttocks or genitals or sexual intercourse, but this sense has a different etymology. It arose in American Black slang, and like the plunder sense of booty, this origin of this sense is uncertain The Oxford English Dictionary says that it may have developed from botty, a nineteenth-century hypocoristic word for the buttocks, originally mostly associated with an infant’s or child’s bottom. We see botty being used in an 1842 letter from Charles Darwin to his wife, Emma. The Annie referenced in the letter is their one-year-old daughter:
What a nice account you give of Charlottes tranquil maternity—I wish the Baby was livlier,—for liveliness is an extreme charm in bab-chicks—good bye.— I long to kiss Annie’s botty-wotty
C.D.—
But to me, this connection to botty is a stretch. More likely, booty is simply a variation on body, or even more likely, butt. And it also seems likely that the plunder sense of booty was an influence on the development of the sexual one, related through the idea of acquisition and conquest.
We’re not quite sure when the sexual sense of booty appeared. Slang is notoriously difficult to pin down, and Black slang even more so, since it is even less likely to appear in publications than white slang. Toward the end of his life in the 1950s, jazz pianist and composer James P. Johnson recalled a song from his youth (1902–08) with the title Don’t Hit That Lady, She Got Good Booty. The interview was published posthumously in the June 1959 issue of Jazz Review:
Q: Did you play anyplace when you were a boy in Jersey City?
A: No, I was too young. Like other kids, I used to work around saloons, doing a little buck dance, playing the guitar and singing songs like Don’t Hit That Lady, She Got Good Booty … Left Her on the Railroad Track … Baby, Let Your Drawers Hang Low. I used to sing through the saloon doorways or at the family entrance since I was in short pants and wasn’t allowed to go inside. Sometimes I used to rush the growler for beer parties so I could learn songs at them.
One usually has to be skeptical about reminiscences about language usage since memories are malleable and anachronistic elements are often inserted into memories. But in this case, it seems likely that Johnson, of all people, would be able to recall with accuracy the songs that influenced him.
The earliest use of booty, or more precisely boody, in print is in Carl Van Vechten’s 1926 novel N[——]r Heaven:
The Creeper had swirled into a dance with a handsome mulatto. His palms were flat across her shoulders, his slender fingers spread apart. There was an ancient impiety about the sensual grace of their united movement.
Take your eyes off the golden-brown, Dick warned, laughing.
You know my type!
It wouldn't take long to learn that.
Byron turned to his companion and looked at him earnestly. Dick, I want to ask you something, he said. Now ... now … that you've gone white, do you really want … pinks for boody?
Dick averted his eyes. That’s the worst of it he groaned. I just don’t. Give me blues every time.
And Zora Neale Hurston uses the phrase in her 1935 novella Mules and Men:
Over at the Florida-flip game somebody began to sing that jook tribute to Ella Wall which has been sung in every jook and on every “job” in South Florida:
Go to Ella Wall
Oh, go to Ella Wall
If you want good boody
Oh, go to Ella WallOh, she’s long and tall
Oh, she’s long and tall
And she rocks her rider
From uh wall to wallOh, go to Ella Wall
Take yo’ trunk and all—“Tell ’em ’bout me!” Ella Wall snapped her fingers and revolved her hips with her hands.
“I’m raggedy, but right; patchey but tight; stringy, but will hang on.”
So booty was clearly established in Black slang in the first half of the twentieth century.
A booty call, not to be confused with a butt dial, is a late-night phone call asking if the person is available for sex. This phrase appears in the 1990s. The rap duo Duice had a 1993 song titled Booty Call; the lyrics, however, have nothing to do with booty calls but are rather about playing music in a club. And the phrase is attested to in the Black teen magazine YSB in April 1994:
YSB: Here at Virginia Union University, do people date anymore or is it just a get together and then “hi” and “bye” type of thing?
Frank Reese, 21, Landover Hills, MD: I don't think people date anymore, we just basically get together to have sex.
YSB: Why is that?
Frank: Dating is an outdated thing. I don't think people really court nowadays. Females just want to have sex, just like males just want to have sex. That's what's going on.
Dominique Alfonse, 21, Brooklyn, NY: That's really a terrible statement to make,' cause I think the girls who do that now are in trouble because there are so many men out here who just want sex. They just figure the only way to keep up is to just join the gang. But I don't feel that the ladies who I interact with on campus are [joining the gang]!! It's all just a state of mind, but I don't feel as though it's something that ladies or men are doing as a fad. I think that it just happens like that.
Frank: Nowadays girls are kinda fast. I've had girls come up to me making the “booty” calls. Guys don't have to make the “booty” calls nowadays.
Sources:
Caxton, William. The Game and Playe of the Chesse (1474). London: Elliot Stock, 1883, 50. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Darwin, Charles. Letter to Emma Darwin, 9 May 1842. University of Cambridge: Darwin Correspondence Project.
Davin, Tom. “Conversations with James P. Johnson.” Jazz Review, 2.5, June 1959, 15–17 at 16. Jazz Studies Online (PDF). (Green’s Dictionary of Slang has this quotation but erroneous states the issue date and page.)
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, n.d., s.v. booty, n.2.
Hurston, Zora Neale. “Mules and Men” (1935). Hurston: Folklore, Memoirs, and Other Writings, Cheryl A. Wall, ed. New York: Penguin Putnam, 1995. 146. Archive.org.
“Posse Talk: Campus Creepin’” YSB, 30 April 1994, 54. ProQuest Magazines.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2002, s.v. booty, n.3, booty call, n.; June 2016, s.v. botty, n.; second edition, 1989, s.v. booty, n.1.
Van Vechten, Carl. N[——]r Heaven. New York: Knopf, 1926, 215. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Image credit: Sony Spain (2018). Wikipedia. Fair use of low-resolution copy of the work to illustrate the topic under discussion.