booby

   A word for a fool which was introduced to English from Spanish (bobo=fool) at the beginning of the seventeenth century. A booby is the kind of man who would be caught out by a booby-trap, but the term is often used jokingly, to imply mild silliness rather than stupidity. In The Country Girls, by Edna O’Brien, ‘booby’ is used as an endearment rather than an insult. In Vanity Fair, by Thackeray, Rebecca calls her husband ‘you old booby’ in a playful way, but the reader knows that she really does consider Rawdon to be an ignorant fool. In the USA, although expressions like ‘Dooby-trap’ and ‘booby hatch’ (an insane asylum) are used, ‘booby’ has tended to become ‘boob’. It is used as a synonym for sucker, someone who is too trusting. ‘You poor boob’ is used by a man to his friend in Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller. There may be some confusion with ‘boob’ meaning woman’s breast, though ‘boob’ in that sense was earlier ‘bub’, earlier still ‘bubby’. A boob also has the slang meaning of a mistake, perhaps one made by a booby. See also Cry-baby.